Sojourn in a Post Town
by omasuoniwabanshi
Summary: Kenshin begins wandering after the Battle of Toba Fushima and stumbles across a mystery in a small town.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin plot or characters.

CHAPTER ONE

After the battle of Toba Fushimi Kenshin exchanged his sharp edged Katana for a sakabatou, a reverse blade sword, and began to wander. He headed North, away from both Tokyo and Kyoto and the memories of war. In the chaos of the Bakumatsu period bandits began to roam the roads with impunity. Merchants were more likely to hire bodyguards to protect their goods on the roads, and the first few jobs Kenshin found were guarding caravans of sake jugs, miso paste, and silk.

He liked the work. Walking alongside the caravans, scouting out the road ahead, and keeping an eye out for anyone following behind didn't leave him a whole lot of time for socializing. He kept himself and his thoughts to himself, accepting payment at the end of the journey and disappearing into the nameless crowds of whatever market town the merchant had chosen as his destination.

His last job paid well. It ended at a big town having a weeklong festival. Not in the mood for celebrating, Kenshin set off, headed for the next big town that might have need of a guard. He walked all day long, his feet making puffs of dust that rose in the still air above the dirt road that wound its way up and down hills. It was late afternoon when the road emerged from tall pines covered with moss and opened up into fields. Beyond the fields lay a small post town, nestled between two foothills.

Before the war, the shogunate carefully controlled and monitored travel, forcing travelers to stop at checkpoints to explain themselves. Now that the war was winding to a close, most of the government officials in charge of the checkpoints had abandoned their posts. This town was one of the smaller substations. As Kenshin drew near, he saw that the checkpoint was indeed abandoned, though the town itself was still going.

He got a few curious looks from the townsfolk as he made his way down the broad center street towards a large sprawling enclave of buildings at the far end. It wasn't that far to go, for the town was smallish, the sort of place people only stopped at if the light was waning and it was too far to make it to the next big town. There would probably only be one inn, and his best bet was the two story building with outbuildings placed strategically around the compound enclosed by a wooden wall.

Kenshin's instincts paid off. The sign outside the gate read, 'Inn' and the gate was open. With a last look down the street lined with one-story buildings on either side, Kenshin entered.

Two children, a boy and a girl not quite into their teens, were sitting on the engawa, the broad wooden porch jutting out from the tallest building set in the center of the fenced enclosure. Both immediately jumped off the porch and ran to him.

The boy got to him first, the girl following a little more shyly. They were dressed in good but worn dark green kimono. The girl's had little butterflies embroidered on the shoulder and hem.

"Welcome to our inn. Were you in the war?" the boy asked, his eyes on the sakabatou hilt sticking out at Kenshin's waist.

"Yes," he answered quietly, a bit nonplussed at the boy's excited demeanor. The kid's eyes were shining and his high ponytail bobbed as he practically jumped up and down with glee.

"I knew it! See, Miho, I told you he was a warrior." The boy sent a triumphant look at the girl who smiled an apologetic smile. "Miho never believes me, but I can tell. Our father is a samurai. He hasn't come back yet, but he will," the boy said confidently.

The girl, Miho, nodded her agreement, and fixed big brown eyes on Kenshin as she said, "Our father is a soldier, just like you. His name's Tanaka. Hiroshi Tanaka. Do you know him?"

From out of the corner of his eye, Kenshin saw a man come around the side of the building, a bundle of linens in his arms and stop to lean against a tree, waiting in the shadows.

"I don't…" began Kenshin hesitantly, mentally going through the list of names of men he'd served with, at least the ones he'd learned. He'd served with Katsura's Choshu faction against the shogunate, but the rebel army had been mixed. Men from Choshu, Satsuma, Tosa, and rebels from all different provinces of Japan had joined together to fight the shogun's forces.

"Father was with the Shinsengumi!" the boy exclaimed.

Kenshin started; he couldn't help it. The Shinsengumi were his enemies, the ruthless police force who patrolled the streets of Kyoto and struck down any suspected rebels. He'd fought against them on several occasions, sometimes killing his opponents, and other times fighting the better of them to a draw.

The boy caught the widening of his eyes, and his quick jerk of recognition. "You've heard of them! Did you fight with them at Toba Fushimi?"

"Yes…" Kenshin found himself answering in the affirmative. He had fought on the same battlefield with the shinsengumi, only it was on a different side. He gave a mental sigh and resigned himself to heading back to the road to try to find another inn further on. Judging by the shadows beginning to lengthen along the grounds of the inn, he'd be lucky to find anything before night fell.

"I knew it!" The boy grasped Miho's arm. "Do you hear that, sister? He was at Toba Fushimi with father!"

"Yes, Mikio, I heard," answered the girl, putting her hand over her brother's and smiling at him.

"Father has a mole by his nose and a crooked little finger on his left hand. Do you remember him now?"

Staring into the boy's eyes, Kenshin had a flash of memory. Toba Fushimi had been chaotic. Gunshots firing all around, the smoke of cannon, and the rush of going into battle armed only with a sword, frantically trying to differentiate enemies from friends in the knots of fighters, those were his memories of Toba Fushimi.

At one point he thought he'd seen Hijikata Toshizo, the shinsengumi's second in command, battling against a bunch of Satsuma men. There'd been several other shinsengumi fighting by his side, both with swords and guns. One of them had a mole by his nose. Then Kenshin had lost sight of them as he'd gone to help some of his Choshu comrades being rushed by shogunate forces. Kenshin closed his eyes for a moment, trying to fix the memory.

"So did you? Did you see him?"

Opening his eyes, he saw the boy, Mikio, staring at him with such a hopeful expression that Kenshin felt he had to answer.

"I think I may have, for a moment. I wasn't in the shinsengumi, I was…"

"Do you know where my brother is now?" The question, low and intense, rang out from the man with the linens, as he entered the conversation for the first time.

Both Mikio and Miho's heads swiveled to look at the man who'd emerged from the shadows at the edge of the building.

He was tall, with long arms that wrapped around the bundle of linens tightly, showing the tension in his body. A few strands of hair had escaped from his ponytail in back and hung down over his temples. His face was unlined, but mature looking, and Kenshin figured he had to be in his late twenties. He stood with his weight on foot and hip, resting his burden on that side of his body as he stared at Kenshin.

"No," said Kenshin, turning slightly from the children to address his answer to Hiroshi Tanaka's brother. "I'm sorry, I only saw him for a minute."

"Ah." The man held his gaze searchingly for a moment, giving Kenshin the uncomfortable impression that the elder Tanaka didn't quite believe him, that he somehow sensed Kenshin wasn't telling the whole story. Then the man's shoulders slumped and the loose strands on his temples fell forward, so he jerked his head to get the hair out of his eyes. "I'm Fukashi Tanaka. You are welcome to our inn," he said formally and bowed over his armful of laundry.

Bowing back, Kenshin straightened to find that Mikio had stepped around his sister to stand in front of him, hands on his hips.

"Father was fighting bravely, wasn't he? When you saw him?"

Hearing the strain in the boy's voice and his manful attempt to both fight back tears and to convince himself that his father was alright, Kenshin nodded. He then turned his attention back to Fukashi as the men came forward, addressing his words to his nephew.

"Hiroshi was the best warrior for miles around before he left to join the Shinsengumi. With the skills he learned serving with them, he's sure to have survived the battle," he said reassuringly.

Mikio grinned his agreement.

"Now, why don't you and your sister go help Aya in the kitchen and stop bothering our guest?"

The children looked disappointed, but nodded and ran inside.

Fukashi turned back to Kenshin. "Please, sir, follow me and I'll show you to a room."

Opening his mouth to protest, Kenshin closed it when he realized Fukashi had already turned his back and was on his way to the porch steps. There was nothing left to do but follow. As he waited on the porch for the innkeeper to slip off his shoes and slide open the shoji screen door, he noticed that the man's right hand and wrist were horribly scarred. Three of his fingers were missing as well, leaving only his thumb and forefinger.

Kenshin had seen much worse, so he didn't comment, noting that the man quickly hid his wounded hand under the linens when he stepped back from the door to let Kenshin through.

The marred hand explained why a man of Fukashi's age from the samurai class had not joined the shinsengumi with his brother. Swordsmen were taught to grip the handle of their swords primarily with their pinkie and ring fingers, placing the strength of the grip in the bottom instead of the top of their clenched fists. With only his forefinger and thumb left, Fukashi would find it difficult to grasp a sword properly. The scars were similar to those Kenshin had seen on corpses that had been burned by explosion or fire. They looked to be old burns too, Kenshin reflected as he slid his weary feet out of his sandals and crossed the threshold of the inn.

"Mamma, Mamma! There's a guy here who knows Father! He fought with him at Toba Fushimi."

Mikio's strident voice rang out from somewhere in the back of the house. Fukashi paused in the inn's main room as a woman appeared, sliding back a shoji screen at the end of the room and peering around it white-faced and trembling.

She was lovely. Her eyes were small and soft looking, set in a pleasantly rounded face with a delicate nose and fine, dark hair pulled back in a simple round bun at the top of her head. A few shorter strands lay in tendrils across her forehead, and she clutched the edge of the shoji screen as if it were a lifeline.

"My husband? You've seen him? Is he…coming home?" she whispered.

Kenshin could feel the tension rising from her and realized that all soldier's wives must live with the constant anxiety of not knowing from one moment until the next if word would come that their spouse was alive or dead.

"I don't know, I lost track of him after Toba Fushimi, but he was alive when I last saw him. I don't know what happened to him after that." Kenshin told her.

"Oh."

It was as if she were a punctured balloon. Her shoulders slumped and she cast her eyes downward as the tension drained out of her.

"Forgive me, great samurai," she murmured. "I must go tend to the dinner."

She bobbed her head in a small bow, and turned to go as an old, white-haired woman appeared to take her arm and lead her away. Kenshin had the oddest feeling that the elderly lady gave a glare at him as she turned to fuss over the younger one. It made him feel guilty.

He hadn't actually lied though. He'd lost track of everyone, both friend and foe, after the battle. Letting her think that he was a samurai, born into that class was another lie of omission, but she'd looked so dejected as she left that Kenshin didn't have the heart to correct her false assumption about him.

Looking over at Fukashi, he saw the man staring at the shoji screen where the woman had gone, with such intense compassion that Kenshin felt embarrassed so he looked away. The room he stood in was square shaped, with matting on the floor and an alcove to the left housing a wallscroll with a mountain scene painted on it. In front of it was a short table with a vase of vibrant red flowers. They were the same color as the red in the red and white imperial banners that had flown over the Choshu/Satsuma line at Toba Fushimi. They were the color of blood.

"Come."

When Kenshin looked around again he saw Fukashi's retreating back and moved to follow him down the hall to his room.

O-O-O

That evening when Kenshin opened the shoji screen at the end of the hall and came into the main room he was surprised to find it full of people. Short lacquered tables were set around the room, and he saw Miho, her mother, and the old woman, Aya, quickly dishing rice into bowls.

As Kenshin entered, all eyes went to him and the room silenced. He ducked his head down as he turned to slide the shoji screen shut, uncomfortably reminded of the way his comrades at the inn in Kyoto would react in the same way when he entered the room. Back then, they were wary of him because they knew his reputation as hitokiri battousai, Katsura's main assassin. Did these people somehow guess his identity?

"That's the samurai who fought with Father!" Mikio's voice rang out in an overly loud whisper.

Kenshin saw the boy across the room leaning into the ear of an elderly man who nodded sagely and glanced over at him. Most of the men in the room were older, as were most of the women sitting demurely by their sides.

Mikio's words seemed to break the spell and the crowd got back to talking and eating. Catching sight of Fukashi, Kenshin went over and sat by him. He'd much rather have retreated to his room to eat alone, but he could see by the way Fukashi's sister in law wiped her forehead wearily and Miho rushed around anxiously that such a request would place an undue burden on his hosts.

"You never mentioned your name."

Kenshin froze for a second while removing his sakabatou from where it was tucked in at his side, then continued to pull it out and set it next to his leg as he sat. His real name was not well known to any but Katsura's inner circle. It was his title, hitokiri battousai, that struck terror.

"It's Himura, Kenshin Himura," he told Fukashi.

Noticing the sake bottle on Fukashi's lacquer tray and the slightly glazed look in the man's eyes, Kenshin realized that his host was well on the way to getting drunk. As he watched, Fukashi used his left hand to pour some more sake into a small saucer, then set the bottle down to pick it up and sip at it, keeping his wounded right hand down at his side.

"You're out of luck," the man said, glaring vaguely around the room. "Otsune ran out of fish so all we've got left is miso soup."

"That will be fine," Kenshin told him.

Fukashi continued to glare and the silence between them lengthened, so Kenshin asked, "Is it always so busy at dinner?"

Snorting, the man knocked back his sake and set the saucer down. "Nope. This is all because of you."

Opening his mouth to ask why, Kenshin was distracted when suddenly Miho appeared holding a tray. Kneeling down, she placed it in front of Kenshin. The intoxicating scent of soup and rice wafted up. With a nod of thanks to the little girl, Kenshin began to eat. He hadn't realized how hungry he was until he started putting the food into his mouth.

To give them credit, the crowd of people waited until he was finished before pouncing. The first to come over was the old man Mikio had whispered too. He made his way over to where Kenshin and Fukashi sat, and plunked himself down next to them.

"So you fought with Hiroshi, did you?" The man's eyes looked expectantly out of a face lined with age, as wrinkled as day old linens.

Deliberating over his answer, Kenshin took the route of least resistance and answered in a monosyllable. "Yes."

"What's your name, sonny?"

"Kenshin Himura."

The man looked him over doubtfully. "You sure you're old enough to have fought in the war?"

Kenshin bit back a sigh, willing his face to remain neutral. He didn't know which was worse, being mistaken for a child not old enough to kill, or being recognized as the legendary assassin of the Ishin Shishi who did.

"Ha ha ha, Hibiki is only joking, great samurai!" Another old man, this one tubby and cheerful looking, sat down by the first and grabbed his friend's shoulder bracingly. "If you're good enough to have fought by Hiroshi Tanaka, then that's good enough for us."

Murmurs of agreement swelled from the people nearby as they swiveled to face Kenshin. Uncomfortable at being the center of such attention, he looked over at Fukashi, hoping that the man would explain that Kenshin had merely been on the same battlefield as his brother, but Fukashi was single-mindedly downing sake and seemed oblivious to Kenshin's plight.

"I am not one of the shinsengumi," Kenshin told the men. "I just fought near them at Toba Fushimi."

"He saw Father there, fighting bravely!" Mikio piped up, squirming in between Fukashi and the men who'd come to sit closer. Even some of the women followed their husbands to sit at their heels, craning their necks to see over the men's shoulders. All except one, a woman of remarkable beauty who sat next to a large, burly man. Kenshin had the feeling that she would have moved closer, but he saw that her husband had his hand on her obi, the broad sash at her waist, and was holding her in her seated position by his side. Her naturally full, red mouth was pressed together and she pointedly ignored the man as she too craned forward to hear.

Kenshin sighed. It looked like he'd have to talk more before they'd let him out. Evidently Hiroshi Tanaka was some kind of small town hero.

"I saw Hiroshi fighting near the ridge where the shinsengumi were stationed. He was at the side of Hijikata Toshizo. It was after the shinsengumi's charge was repulsed and they were fighting hand to hand. I was pulled away to a different part of the battlefield and I didn't see him after that."

The people sighed and began talking excitedly among themselves. Happy that the attention was now off of him and concentrated on discussing what he'd said, Kenshin sank back and glanced over again at the unhappy couple sitting against the far wall. The woman saw him looking and went to rise, but her husband jerked her back to the floor and her expression grew angry. Discomforted at having seen it, Kenshin looked away.

Fukashi wasn't the only one who'd been drinking sake, and Kenshin found that tongues loosened by liquor tend to wag on and on. He sat by his host's side listening to stories of Hiroshi's goodness, his intelligence, and his valor with a sword. Kenshin listened, nodded when appropriate, and let the excited townsfolk talk. Eventually, the yawns became too marked to ignore, and people began to drift away to go home.

Kenshin hadn't seen Miho, Aya, or Fukashi's sister in law, whose name was Otsune, in a while, but from the lack of dishes on the trays he assumed they were back in the kitchen washing up. He sighed. If his last job hadn't paid so well, he'd be the one back there washing the dishes in exchange for a roof over his head and a bite to eat, and thankful for it.

"But I don't want to go home yet!" Hibiki, the old man who'd first sat by Kenshin, sounded like a petulant child.

His friend, the rotund one, merely laughed and said, "Come on, you know you need your beauty rest!"

Grumbling, Hibiki got to his knees and shot Kenshin a look. "Fine, I'll go, but we'll continue our conversation tomorrow."

Conversation? Hibiki had prattled on, sharing his favorite Hiroshi stories all evening. Kenshin hadn't contributed a thing to the 'conversation'.

"I'm sorry, but I'm leaving tomorrow morning," he told the old man politely.

There was a collective sigh of protest. Men paused while gathering themselves to go and turned back to object.

"No, no, you can't go now!"

"So soon? Why not stay a while?"

"But you just got here!"

The last protest was from Mikio, who pushed his way in front of Kenshin and sat confronting him.

"I must go where there is work," Kenshin told him gravely. "I'm a wanderer. I act as bodyguard for merchant caravans."

Mikio made a rude noise.

"Well, if you're looking for that sort of work you're out of luck for a while!" crowed Hibiki, with an arch grin.

"He's right," the tubby man affirmed. "I'm afraid that all the caravans have come and gone by now, and you won't see many more of them until the festival in Sendai is over. It's the largest marketplace around and with the festival going on all week…Every merchant worth anything is already there and will stay until it's over."

There was a collective grumbling about the lucky Sendai townsfolk and their festival, and then the renewed protests started.

Hibiki looked pointedly at Fukashi, who rolled his eyes blearily as he realized that the townsfolk were looking to him.

"Yes, samurai, please stay at least for the weekend. As a comrade of my brother's how can you deny us our hospitality?" Kenshin wasn't sure, but he thought he heard a hint of reluctance in the man's voice. He sympathized. The man probably thought that by inviting him to stay longer, he'd have to put up with him for free. Luckily, the coins Kenshin earned on his last job would stretch to enable him to spend a few more days at the inn.

Added voices urged Kenshin until he reluctantly found himself agreeing to stay the weekend. He wanted to tell them that he wasn't a samurai, that he wasn't really an ally of Hiroshi Tanaka, but somehow he just couldn't bear to disappoint the people in front of him who were leaving with smiling faces and happy memories relived.

Reassured, they left and soon Kenshin found himself lying on a comfortable futon and staring up at the ceiling of his room, wondering what he'd do if Hiroshi showed up tomorrow. Over a hundred shinsengumi had survived the battle of Toba Fushimi. He didn't know where they'd gone, he just heard they'd retreated. Was Hiroshi a casualty, one of the many deserters, or was he still out there somewhere with the remnants? How many other families like the Tanakas were waiting for word of their loved ones, going on with their lives without any way of knowing if they should be mourning or rejoicing?

How many families' lives had Kenshin ruined by cutting down their husbands, fathers, or brothers? He sighed. At least he knew beyond shadow of doubt that this was one time he would not be responsible for others' sadness. Hiroshi had been healthy, with a strong fighting spirit when he'd seen him that brief instant on the battlefield. If he was dead, that was one death that was not Kenshin's fault. He closed his eyes and went to sleep.

To Be Continued…


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin plot or characters.

CHAPTER TWO

The next morning Kenshin woke before dawn, as was his custom, and went out into the yard in front of the inn. There hadn't been much rain lately, so the dirt was firm, a perfect surface for practicing his swordsmanship.

With the high walls surrounding the inn, and the Tanaka family sleeping soundly inside, there was no one to see him as he ran through the moves his master, Hiko Seijiro the thirteenth, had drummed into him. In the quiet pre-dawn stillness, if he closed his eyes, he could imagine Hiko standing there in his distinctive white cloak, arms crossed, gazing measuringly at every move Kenshin made.

Kenshin's eyes snapped open. He'd been executing his moves blind, with his eyes shut. Sighing, he sheathed his blade and went over to sit on the engawa. The wooden planks were chilly under his legs, like the air. All was quiet. Even the birds weren't yet awake, though the thin edge of light tracing the mountaintops to the east proclaimed that dawn was about to break.

Kenshin sat quietly, letting his thoughts drift past similar dawns in Otsu when each morning had been a gift, then further back to the dawns of his childhood with Hiko, when waking up early to practice had been a loathsome chore to a young boy. Now those mornings seemed a paradise lost, a time of innocence that he could never get back again. What was his master doing now? Had he ever learned what had become of his 'baka deshi'? That his predictions had all come true?

Eventually the Tanaka household woke and began to stir. Sound carries in the chill of the dawn. Fukashi's quiet grumbling preceded his footsteps as he visited the latrine out back of the inn. The old woman, Aya, muttered softly as she moved slowly about her room. Otsune's light steps were more difficult to hear, but her voice, low and sweet as she woke her children, came clearly to his ears. Mikio was garrulous in the mornings, his sister quieter and slower to get moving.

When the smell of food cooking began to waft outside, Kenshin knew it was time to end his solitude and rejoin the world of the living. He got up, took off his sandals, and went inside.

"Ah, Mr. Himura!"

Miho was the first person he encountered when he entered the inn's main room. He saw her moving towards him across the floor. She was wearing the same green kimono she'd worn the day before, but her hair ribbon was askew, and she'd missed a few strands when she'd bound her hair into a ponytail. In her arms she held a bucket, and was clearly on her way to get water from the well outside.

"Good morning, Miss Miho." Kenshin greeted her formally.

Miho blushed. "Oh, good morning to you too, Mr. Himura. I didn't expect to see you up so soon."

"Oh, well, I get up early." Kenshin found himself saying apologetically.

"That's because he's a soldier!" Mikio shoved open a shoji screen and came into the main room, also carrying a bucket.

"Aya says we're going to need more water," he said to his sister, but his eyes were on Kenshin. "Soldiers always get up early, to be ready in case of surprise attack."

Kenshin blinked at that. Most of the soldiers he knew would have given their eyeteeth for some more time to sleep in each day. It was the officers who got them up and moving in the mornings.

"Mikio, Miho," Otsune's voice called gently as she too came into the room. She didn't see Kenshin at first, and continued to speak to her children.

"Miho, your hair, dear." She sighed and plucked the bucket out of her daughter's arms, handing it to her son. "Let me fix it."

Mikio made a face as he took the bucket while his sister patiently stood still as her mother took a comb out of her kimono sleeve and pulled it through her daughter's hair. There was a smile on the woman's face, indulgent and tender, as she rebound and retied her daughter's hair.

Kenshin didn't remember his own mother. She'd died when he was very young, and all he had left were fleeting impressions. As he watched Otsune with her daughter, he seemed to recall his mother's smile. Then Mikio shifted his weight impatiently and grumbled, and the moment was lost.

"Mikio, why don't you go get the water? Miho can help in the kitchen."

Rolling his eyes at his mother, Mikio stomped off. Otsune's eyes followed him, lighting on Kenshin as Mikio drew near to where he was standing.

When she saw him, it was as if a shutter came down over her face. The tender, motherly look disappeared and a more formal, impersonal innkeeper's expression took over.

"Forgive me, great samurai, I did not see you there."

Kenshin didn't bother to point out that the room was still shadowy, with the sun barely up and no candles lit in it.

"I will go see to your breakfast." She bowed, and quickly left the room.

Miho followed, smiling apologetically and wiggling her fingers in a farewell wave.

Breakfast was a solitary affair. Kenshin was alone in the main room at a single low table. The family ate apart, in the kitchen. Eating in a dining hall was strange, after so many months of eating his meals around campfires, first with the Ishin Shishi army, then on the road with merchant caravans. You could be a loner in a crowd, he always was, but there was something about being completely alone in an empty room that depressed.

Finishing as quickly as he could, Kenshin set off to explore the town.

The main street was wide, splitting the clusters of thatch-roofed shops and houses into two equal parts. A small river ran along one side of the town for a bit, and Kenshin wandered beside it, keeping to the grassy verge above the rocky embankment, which was built to contain the overflow when the river's water surged higher during the rainy season. It was peaceful there, gazing at the sun dappled water flowing shallowly in the white sand and boulder strewn riverbed. Eventually the river curved away from the town so Kenshin turned back.

He spent the rest of the morning watching the craftsmen at their tasks. Many of the homes on the main street had outer rooms that opened up to the outside when their shoji screens were pushed back to reveal the workshops within. He watched a basketmaker and his wife, their heads covered with kerchiefs, deftly manipulating the strands of dampened, slivered bamboo into circular patterns. As the baskets in their hands developed from a flat base into rounded bowl shapes, the couple bickered amiably with each other and told him about each and every basket in their shop, the sieve baskets, rice baskets, fish baskets, and their most popular item, the noodle draining colander baskets. Kenshin listened attentively for a while then wandered up the street to watch other craftsmen at their tasks.

At each and every shop he was asked about Hiroshi Tanaka, and after he repeated his one memory of the man from the battlefield, he was in turn treated to stories of the man's childhood feats of valor, funny sayings, and acuity in the training dojo he'd attended. It became a bit wearisome after a while. Kenshin began to get the impression that Hiroshi Tanaka was a charming scamp, able to turn childhood transgressions into amusing and utterly forgivable incidents that people were willing to laugh about, instead of punish.

He ended up at a cooper's shop with pails and buckets lined up neatly on shelves. The cooper worked alone with ferocious concentration, and apart from asking if Kenshin wanted to buy anything, the man ignored him. It was nice to not be the center of attention, to be able to watch a true craftsman lining up the slats of wood into a circle and carefully placing the metal circlets over them, binding them into a permanent cylinder, waterproof and ready to carry anything from tofu to well water. The work was hard on the hands and Kenshin noticed various nicks and cuts where splinters had gashed the man. The cooper sat on the porch of his shop surrounded by bits and pieces of wood and his tools, one leg tucked under him and the other stuck out in front of him, ready to be used to steady the bottom of the bucket he was working on.

A middle aged woman, with grey beginning to thread its way through the black of her hair, and stout in a brown kimono with blue stripes, came to the shop with a cloth-covered tray in her hands.

"Toshi, I've brought your lunch!" she said, nodding politely at Kenshin as she moved past him.

The cooper blinked and stared at her a moment before uttering a gruff noise of assent. He got to his feet, took the tray, nodded curtly at Kenshin, and retreated inside the doorway leading to the interior rooms of the shop.

The woman sighed.

"Forgive him please. Since his daughter left home years ago he has no family. I think he doesn't realize he's being rude. Because he has no one to talk to, he's gotten out of the habit of talking. He gets lost in his work, you see."

Kenshin looked into the lady's eyes and saw that in spite of the wrinkles lining the outer edges, her eyes had a youthful sparkle that belied her age.

"It's alright," he told her. "I didn't notice." Kenshin became uncomfortably aware that the reason he hadn't noticed the cooper's 'rudeness' was simply because he was that way as well, a loner, not used to talking to people. In the Bakumatsu few people wanted to socialize with an assassin, and his bodyguarding jobs allowed him to guard without forming relationships or attachments to the merchants in his safekeeping.

The woman gazed back at him speculatively, and Kenshin resisted an urge to squirm as she assessed him.

"I think you're a very nice young man," she said, surprising him. "Will you help an old woman back to her home?"

All of a sudden Kenshin, despite his years as an assassin and a soldier in the Ishin Shishi army, felt very young as he walked by the woman's side down the dusty street.

As they walked, a shopkeeper came outside of his shop, pushing a pile of dirt along with a broom to the edge of the small porch that ran along his shopfront. When he saw Kenshin he stopped and stared.

Kenshin slowed his steps, feeling the man's fixed on him, not with the friendly interest of the other townsfolk, or the indifference of the cooper, but with a very real and vital hatred. As he looked back at the man, he recognized him from the night before. It was the burly man who'd stayed in back holding his wife by her obi.

The man shoved the dirt off his porch with a quick, vicious snap of his broom, then spat into the street and whirled to retreat back inside of his shop. As he approached, his wife appeared in the doorway. Her eyes widened with recognition and delight as she saw Kenshin from over her husband's shoulder. She made as if to go outside, but her husband blocked her way. With one hand he shoved her back inside and with the other he slammed the shoji screen door closed behind him. From behind the door two voices raised in furious argument.

Kenshin winced and looked away from the shop to find that the older lady had stopped to shake her head at the closed shop with the sound of the couple's escalating argument rising inside.

"Hideki bought himself a world of trouble when he married that one," she muttered. Then she shook herself and began walking forward. "Come along," she told Kenshin. "You don't want to be around when they start throwing things."

The shop seemed too small to contain the anger reverberating inside it. With a last look, Kenshin trotted after the woman, catching up with her at the corner of the next house. She turned the corner and went down a side street.

"So what do you think of our fair town?"

"It's…nice." Kenshin said, inadequately, still shaken by the arguing couple.

"Yes," she said reflectively. "Though you must be tired by now of our one and only topic of conversation."

Kenshin looked at her questioningly and she continued.

"I mean the great and wonderful Hiroshi Tanaka, of course," she said dryly. "Though if he were back perhaps people wouldn't keep prosing on and on about how wonderful he is," she muttered.

"Why do you say that?"

He was curious. So far the only things he'd heard about Hiroshi Tanaka were indulgent anecdotes and paeans to his greatness.

The woman's steps slowed before a small cottage. Her lips thinned as she pressed them together. "Never mind, I'm probably just being uncharitable again. My daughter in law accuses me of that a lot," she laughed unrepentantly. "I'm Mrs. Minoburi, by the way. Thank you for walking me home."

And with that she bowed, gave him a pleasant smile, and disappeared into the cottage, leaving Kenshin alone.

To Be Continued


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin, plot or characters.

CHAPTER THREE

Kenshin found himself in an unfamiliar part of town. After walking Mrs. Minoburi home, he'd wandered the side streets. There weren't that many of them, for it was a small town, and he soon found himself at the edge of it. Farm fields stretched out before him, with dirt paths running in between and for a moment he felt the pull of them, the temptation to just choose a path and keep walking past the fields until he was enveloped in pine forests again, away from people.

However, he'd promised to stay longer at the inn, and now he was stuck. Turning back from the temptation of the fields, he headed back towards the river, crossing the main street quickly so that no one would stop him and try to strike up yet another conversation extolling the virtues of hometown hero, Hiroshi Tanaka.

Soon he stepped out between two wood and thatch houses and was staring across the riverbed to the tangle of shrubs and pine on the far embankment. A few pine trees lined his side of the river above the boulders that the town had used to retain the dirt of the embankment. The water in the riverbed was low enough to create a small sandy strip by the water.

On a whim, Kenshin leapt down the boulders, landed on the tiny beach, and set off. The sun was warm on his head and shoulders, and he wished he'd brought a hat. As he rounded a bend in the river, he flinched. A strand of something hit his face. He thought at first that it was a cobweb, but when he stepped back he saw it was a string. There were four of them extending down to the river which swirled at his feet, where the water formed a round pool before flowing past the bend.

Following the strings with his eyes up to their point of origin, Kenshin found himself looking up at four old men, sitting on the grass with their legs dangling over the edge of the embankment, clutching fishing poles. They'd chosen a spot in the shade of an ancient tree with roots that made for perfect backrests. They gaped back at him in astonishment.

"Hey, isn't that the samurai who fought with Hiroshi Tanaka at Toba Fushimi?" The old man on the far end asked. He was wizened to this size of a child, but there was nothing else child-like about him, not with his snow-white hair and voice that creaked with age.

"Yep!" A slightly chubby elderly man beamed down at Kenshin. "That's him. Look, Hibiki, the samurai's here."

"I see him. I've got eyes, don't I?" Hibiki, his face a mass of wrinkles, scowled at his tubby friend, then called down to Kenshin. "I see you've come to finish our conversation," he said sagely, as if he'd had an appointment with Kenshin. "Come on up here and join us."

With an inward sigh, Kenshin obeyed, climbing slowly up the medium sized boulders, and steadying the sakabatou at his side so the sheath wouldn't scrape against them. When he reached the top he sat down obediently next to the heavyset one, pulling his sheathed sakabatou from his obi and laying it down on the grass.

"I'm Chigira," The tubby man said. "You already know Hibiki, and this is Toji and Komei."

Kenshin nodded politely at them. Hibiki he remembered from the night before. He was the old man who'd first come over to speak to Kenshin. Toji was the smallest one and Komei appeared to be the youngest of the lot. Komei had fewer wrinkles than the others, but his shoulders bowed with age and his hands shook slightly on his fishing pole.

"I am pleased to meet you."

They all made polite sounds back at him and settled back against their tree roots. Kenshin sat upright, half in and half out of the shade. Sometimes he slept that way too, back propped up against the wall, sakabatou leaning against his shoulder. Even though the war was ending, there were days when the feel of it came upon him again, and his instincts screamed at him to be wary, even in sleep. Those nights he ignored the inn futons and slept like a soldier.

The old men fished in silence for a while, then began to talk.

"So, what made you become a wanderer?" The question came from the irrepressible Hibiki. His friend, Chigira, rolled his eyes at Hibiki's inquisitiveness.

Glancing uneasily at the four pair of eyes focused on him, Kenshin shrugged. "Just looking for work," he said.

"You like it?" asked Toji in a raspy voice. "This wandering business?"

"It's…fine."

The reply was inadequate, but what else was there to say? That he had no place to go now that the war was over? That he'd broken with his shishou, the master swordsman who'd trained him and raised him like a son? That because of a promise he'd made to a dying woman he could never kill again, and what could a trained killer do when he could no longer kill, but wander around Japan looking for other work? What would they say if they knew the truth?

Kenshin looked away towards the river.

"Eh, all you young people have itchy feet these days," said Hibiki disapprovingly. "It's not like it was in my day. My generation stayed home and tended to the fields."

Toji and Komei murmured their agreement, but Chigira admonished his friend teasingly.

"Now, now, Hibiki, it's wartime, so it's normal for the young men of the village to leave. I'm sure we had people coming and going in our day as well. We are a post town after all, with a road that runs right through us. People come and go all the time."

"Strangers, maybe," muttered Toji in a voice that said everyone knew strangers were nuts. Komei nodded.

"Well what about all those silly girls who left the village to go to the big city and never came back? What about them? That was before the war too!" Hibiki offered triumphantly.

"You're right," conceded Chigira thoughtfully, taking one of his hands off his fishing pole to rub his chin. "There were four or five of them who up and left, one after the other. I know Hiroshi tried to talk them out of it, but they all left anyhow. Though why they'd want to leave our village…"

"Maybe they had their reasons," said Kenshin softly. He thought of Tomoe, who'd left her home to avenge the death of her fiancée.

Shaking himself out of his reverie, Kenshin looked up to find all four men gazing at him in astonishment.

"What does a big city have that we don't have right here?" asked Hibiki. "We've got everything a body could want, and if we can't make it we buy it from the merchants who come through. We don't need to go to a city to be happy!" he finished truculently. The others laughed and nodded, even Chigira who seemed to deem it his role in life to rein in his hot-headed friend.

"Hey, I've got a fish!" Toji cackled, and yanked back on his line.

The old men gathered around, coaching and encouraging as the fish was pulled in and proudly displayed, twitching vigorously on the fishhook.

Kenshin leaned forward to admire it. It came to him just then, that this was what he'd fought for, the right for people to fish on a sunny afternoon, to laugh without fear. They had no idea what a city was like. Some would say they were simple, unsophisticated, peasants, but at least they were content with their lives. He wanted them to continue to live that way, in happiness. This was why he fought, to stop the simple people from suffering under the Tokugawa Shogunate.

He spent the afternoon with them, happy to listen to their good-natured squabbles and stories of village life. They even ran out of Hiroshi Tanaka stories after a while, and talked about themselves and their families. Eventually, the light changed and the fish stopped biting. It was late afternoon, and the old men started packing up. Kenshin walked with them back to the main street, then set off down it to the inn.

o-o-o

The inn was a welcome sight after his long day in town. Miho was crossing the yard with an armful of firewood as he approached. She dipped her head and smiled shyly as she bowed as politely as she could with her burden. Today her hair was tied back at the base of her neck with a wide blue ribbon.

"Good afternoon, Himura-san,"

Kenshin inclined his head and returned her greeting.

"Would you like a bath? I'm restocking the bathhouse right now." Miho shifted the firewood in her arms to show him.

Baths cost extra. Kenshin felt the weight of the coins secreted in his sleeve, did some mental calculations, and sighed. It was worth it. The strain of having to talk to so many different people was beginning to tell on him. He wasn't used to it. Back during the war, people hadn't been eager to chat with the hitokiri battousai.

He found that even though he genuinely liked the people he spoke to, it wasn't easy to come up with things to say to them. All they wanted to talk about was Hiroshi, and how he was the pride of their town. The hypocrisy of pretending he'd not fought against Hiroshi's side in the war was a strain. A bath would be relaxing.

"Yes, thank you."

Miho giggled. "I thought so! Uncle Fukashi always feels better after a bath. I'll go light the fire. The water should be warm soon."

Feels better? Was the strain showing on his face? Kenshin waited on the porch, removing his sword from his obi to sink into a seated position on the hard planks. A short time later Miho appeared around the edge of the house and said,

"The bath is ready, sir. Follow me."

She smiled and led the way down the side porch to a bathhouse set apart from the main residence. It was a midsized bathhouse made from wood and plaster with a porch extending from the front. As Kenshin climbed the stone step to get to it he noticed signs of wear. One of the planks was cracked and needed replacing.

Miho went to a tansu, a large wooden cabinet set against the outer wall by the bathhouse door. Standing on her tiptoes, she reached up to slide back the cabinet's wooden panel to reveal shelves with piles of neatly folded cloth. She grabbed one, closed the panel and extended the cloth to Kenshin.

"Please, enjoy your bath!" she said in a very formal, polite fashion, then ruined the effect she was going for by giggling and running off down the stone step, back to the house.

"Thank you," said Kenshin to her retreating back. As he turned to enter the bathhouse he noticed that the bottom portion of the tansu was broken. The small, stubby support leg was gone, and the tansu rested on a stone someone had put there to replace it.

It was just another sign of decay. The mansion turned inn had fallen on hard times during the war. There simply wasn't enough money or manpower to fix everything properly, but the family was doing the best they could. Suddenly Kenshin didn't begrudge the extra coins for the bath. Grasping his drying cloth, he entered.

It was definitely a samurai's bathhouse. Along with shelves for clothes and sandals, there were wooden racks for swords, and smaller ones for daggers. Undressing quickly, Kenshin put his clothes, his sakabatou, and Tomoe's dagger away, then scrubbed the dirt and sweat off his body and dumped a bucket of water over his head before moving to the sunken tub in the middle of the room.

Climbing in, he sighed. The smell of the wood fire below, heating the bath, and the scent of water against teak reminded him of baths he'd had in the Ishin Shishi inn in Kyoto. Often he'd had to make do with scrubbing the blood off using a bucket of cold water, but sometimes he'd splurged and had a real bath, cleaning himself then soaking in hot water. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the wooden rim of the tub, allowing the warmth to relax his muscles and drain the tension from his body.

The water began to cool eventually, so Kenshin got out and dried himself with the cloth Miho left him. He knelt on the floor and used it on his hair, wishing he'd asked her for a spare one. His hair was getting longer. He kept forgetting to trim it, so it took longer to dry. He placed the ends in the cloth and tried to wring it out as much as possible.

Suddenly, he was aware he wasn't alone. There was a noise, the creak of a board outside.

It was the only warning he got before the shoji screen door to the bathhouse slid open violently and his attacker appeared, sword in hand.

The man was dressed all in black, like a ninja, with a black scarf wrapped around his face concealing all but his eyes. The sun had sunk lower while Kenshin bathed and the shadows were beginning to lengthen in the yard beyond the doorway, and the man's face was just a dark shape, his body outlined in a faint orange glow from the setting sun.

The man brought his sword down in a slash.

As he'd been trained, Kenshin slipped his feet to the side and rolled backwards along his spine and over his shoulder, coming up in a crouch. He'd grasped instinctively at his chest where he usually kept Tomoe's dagger tucked into the folds of his gi, but his gi and the dagger were both across the room from him.

His enemy's sword came down right where he'd sat a second before, and stuck in the wood.

Hiko always said that while a sword was best, you could use anything as a weapon.

Glancing around, Kenshin saw a long handled bathing brush on the floor next to a stool. He reached for it as the man pulled his sword out of the floor.

Lunging forward, Kenshin sliced with the brush, using it as he would a sword, and felt it connect with the man's shin.

The man stifled a yelp and jumped back, but recovered quickly. Kenshin saw the gleam of metal as the sun caught a glint on the blade, which was beginning another downward stroke. Still in a crouch, he did the only thing he could. He launched himself upwards and caught the man's bicep, shoving him backwards and off balance, preventing him from completing his swing.

Then they both heard it from the open doorway, the creaking slide of a shoji screen from the main house, and the feminine sound of humming. It was Miho.

The man gave a muffled curse and instead of resuming the attack, he recovered from his stumble and kept going, backing quickly out the door. Kenshin followed, reaching briefly over to the sword rack to grasp his sheathed sakabatou blade, but that instant's delay was his undoing.

With a crash, the tall, heavy tansu cabinet fell across the doorway, blocking his way. The man had shoved it over as he went, creating an effective roadblock.

Kenshin threw himself at the tansu, quickly assessing the area between the cabinet's edge and the top of the doorway. Most men would not have been able to get through it, but he was small and lithe. He lunged upward, fingers pressed against the wood, and managed to get his upper torso through the opening, his chest and belly lying flat on the side of the upended tansu. He was just drawing a knee up in order to shove his hips through the opening when he heard it. Glancing up, Kenshin saw Miho standing in front of the bathhouse, hands over her mouth giggling helplessly.

"Oh dear, are you stuck?" she asked in a voice high with mirth and pity. "Mama said that cabinet was going to fall over one of these days."

Kenshin froze, halfway out the opening, and realizing suddenly and awfully that he was still completely naked. He shrank down against the cabinet, thanking every god he could think of that he hadn't managed to get further out before Miho showed up.

"I'll go get someone to help!" Miho promised cheerfully and ran off.

Kenshin felt his face turn red.

Slithering back into the bathhouse, he grabbed his clothes and dressed as hurriedly as possible. By the time Fukashi and Mikio got the heavy cabinet off the doorway he was decently clothed, not blushing anymore, and reconciled to the fact that his opponent was beyond reach.

That night Kenshin slept sitting up against the wall, sakabatou within easy reach.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin, plot or characters

CHAPTER FOUR

Morning came at last, a welcome distraction from the uneasy sleep Kenshin had in snatches. His dreams were chaotic swirls of memory and monsters. He saw Tomoe in them, bloodied and suffering. Wolves' eyes, blue haori coats, and scenes of horror from Toba Fushimi danced through his dreams.

Going outside to practice with his sword had a calming affect on his body, but his mind still raced. Who attacked him in the bathhouse? Who wanted him dead? And why? Had someone in this adamantly pro-shogunate town recognized him as an Ishin Shishi rebel? Did they know him as the hitokiri battousai? Had he killed a son, a brother, or the father of one of the townsfolk? There were so many victims, so many deaths to atone for. A seemingly friendly face could hide betrayal, hate, or a desire for revenge. Kenshin learned that lesson during the war.

He tightened his grip on his sword, and finished his practice.

He was just returning to the inn's porch when he heard the shouting. A man was running up the street towards the inn, calling out the Tanaka family name between gasps. He burst through the gate and into the courtyard, coming to a stop before Kenshin, who turned to confront him.

The man was skinny and middle aged, with thinning hair and a face beaded with sweat from his exertions. Not a threat. Kenshin let his hand drift away from his sakabatou hilt. From inside the inn he heard Fukashi struggling out of bed, and a muffled curse as he tripped and fell heavily in his haste to get up.

Otsune was the first out the door, her hair tumbling loose about the shoulders of her yukata, her sleeping kimono. She clutched the edges of it together at her neck.

"What is it? What's wrong?" she cried out.

Mikio and Miho came tumbling out of the inn behind her, and she moved forward on the porch to avoid being shoved out of the doorway by her children. Fukashi followed, limping and cursing under his breath, eyes big and worried beneath straggly bangs matted by sleep.

The middle-aged messenger's eyes lit on Fukashi, and he panted out his words between gasps, still recovering from his run.

"Fukashi, it's your brother. They've found his body. He's dead."

Kenshin looked back at the family gathered on the porch. Otsune went pale. Mikio's mouth opened and closed like a fish. His sister Miho's face crumpled and tears stood out in her eyes. Fukashi looked as though he'd been hit in the stomach by a hammer, but alone of all of them, he was the one who managed to speak.

"What? How?"

The messenger dropped his eyes to the dirt, as if bearing the news was a shameful thing. "Nori's sons were out with their dog. They found his body in a ditch just off the road by the old tavern. It's been there for a while."

With a soft sigh, Otsune fainted. Kenshin made an instinctive step forward, but Fukashi was already there to catch her, shoving his way in between the children to wrap his arms around her back before her head could hit the ground.

Their mother's collapse broke the children's shock, and they began to cry, Miho shaking with the force of her sobs, and Mikio angrily dashing his tears away with his hands.

"It's a lie! I don't believe you! It's a lie!" Mikio exploded off the porch and ran out the gate, nearly knocking the scrawny man over. The messenger gaped at Kenshin and the rest of the Tanaka family, then looked back out the open gate where Mikio had disappeared.

"Wait! You don't want to see it!" he yelled, and took off after the boy.

Kenshin glanced back at the porch in time to see Fukashi Tanaka slip his arm underneath Otsune's knees and lift her. Even in the pale light of dawn, he could see the worry and compassion on the man's face as he gazed down at the unconscious form of his sister-in-law. Without looking up, Fukashi wheeled and limped with her back indoors, calling out to the old maidservant, Aya, for help.

Left alone on the porch, Miho continued to cry.

Kenshin stood listening to her sobs. Mikio and the messenger were long gone, the gate swinging back on its hinges lazily in their wake. From inside the inn Kenshin could hear Fukashi's deep voice together with the softer, worried inquiries of Aya, the maidservant, as they tended to Otsune. There was no one else.

This was not his family, or his tragedy, and Kenshin was unsure of his place, but there was Miho crying her heart out, and he couldn't just walk away and ignore her.

He climbed the porch steps and crossed the planks to stand beside the girl, moving his hand forward awkwardly to pat her shoulder.

Miho wailed and buried her face in his side. Kenshin put an arm around her and let her cry. Eventually, the sobs lessened, and he was able to walk her over to sit down on the edge of the porch next to him, with their legs dangling over the side. Miho continued to lean her head against his arm as her sobs became sniffles.

"I don't know why I'm crying so much," she confided. "I barely remember father. It's been five years since he went away to Kyoto."

Five years ago was 1863. The shinsengumi were in Kyoto actively recruiting. Hiroshi Tanaka must have joined them back then.

"It's Mikio who remembers him better than I do," Miho went on. "Father liked him best because he was a boy. I stayed with Momma most of the time when Father would take Mikio to the dojo. I don't even remember Father's face!" She hiccoughed and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.

"I'm sorry," Kenshin said, feeling totally inadequate.

"It's OK," the little girl sniffed. "It's not your fault."

Kenshin stared out across the inn's courtyard at the gate Mikio and the messenger had disappeared through. It wasn't his fault, this time.

Sensing his inattention, Miho got to her feet. "Well, I'd better go to Momma. She's going to be very sad now that father is dead." She gulped and swallowed down more tears, then gave him a sad smile, and left.

Kenshin nodded gravely and watched the child enter the inn. These sorts of situations reminded him of how inadequate he was. Without the purpose and cadences of military life, he felt almost lost. He missed his shishou, Hiko, with a pang so sharp it was almost physical. Hiko was the only family he'd known for years. Even knowing that he could never return to him, not after what he'd done, and become, it was reassuring to know that Hiko was still there, still alive. Today Mikio and Miho lost that hope.

Mikio.

Kenshin thought of the bodies he'd seen on the battlefield, left to rot because there was no time to bury or cremate them. The messenger said that Hiroshi Tanaka's body had been there for 'a while'. With a sigh, Kenshin realized it was probably already too late to shield Mikio from such a sight, but he slid off the porch and strarted off for town anyway. This house of mourning was no place for him. He'd be leaving today anyhow. The weekend was over.

Midway down the main street, he ran into the procession. A group of men carrying a stretcher with a blanket covered form were making their way down the dirt road. They were accompanied by teary eyed women following at a distance, and grim faced older men. Kenshin scanned the knot of people, but saw no sign of Mikio.

He moved to the side of the street to let the procession past. As they came abreast of him, an older man in a grey and white kimono raised his hand, signaling the stretcher bearers to halt. As they did, an arm flopped out from under the blanket. The skin was mottled and bloated with decomposition. The pinky finger on the hand was crooked. It had to be Hiroshi Tanaka.

One of the stretcher bearers cursed quietly and shoved the arm back under the blanket.

The man who'd halted the procession came forward. He had a thin, almost emaciated face with small narrow eyes which tried to bore their way through Kenshin. He thought back to his first night at the inn. This man hadn't been there. He'd never seen him before.

"You there, samurai."

With a start, Kenshin realized the man was addressing him. Not wanting to go into an explanation of how that misconception came to be, he merely nodded.

"We found Hiroshi's body south of town. You came from the south, didn't you?"

"Yes." Kenshin nodded again, curtly. The crowd of people were now all staring at him, thanks to the man in the grey and white kimono. The man stared as well, his eyes cold.

"How did Tanaka die?" Kenshin asked. Something was wrong. If Hiroshi Tanaka had died by natural causes, the man wouldn't be staring at him so suspiciously.

"By sword."

All eyes were drawn to the sakabatou hilt protruding from Kenshin's obi belt. He resisted an urge to place his hand on it.

The man's eyes grew even harder. "Maybe you shouldn't leave today."

Kenshin blinked at that. How did he know that Kenshin planned to leave? He glanced over and saw Mrs. Minoburi in the crowd. Next to her stood Hibiki, Chigira, Toji, and Komei, the old men from the river. They'd all been at the inn when Kenshin had agreed to stay only over the weekend. They must have told this man.

Hibiki pushed his way forward to yell at the man in the grey and white kimono. "How dare you, Shinohara! How dare you treat this man like some kind of criminal? He fought with Hiroshi Tanaka!"

Hibiki's face was red, and his white hair stood out in disarray around his ears. It had the unfortunate effect of making him look like an irritated baby.

Shinohara was not impressed. "We only have HIS word for that," he returned.

Hibiki's gasp of outrage was echoed by several of his compatriots.

Shinohara continued, glancing away from the enraged old man to glare back at Kenshin. "If he's so innocent, why is he so keen to leave town? A true friend of Hiroshi's would want to stay and find his killer, not leave."

Kenshin opened his mouth to explain that he wasn't leaving yet, that he'd gone to find Mikio, but he closed it as voices from the crowd began to call out.

"Yes, please, great samurai."

"Stay, please, samurai."

"Stay and help us."

Kenshin looked around at the expectant faces of the men and women. He saw hope in Hibiki's eyes, approval in Chigira's. When his gaze passed over Mrs. Minoburi's plump, motherly face, she raised an eyebrow and shrugged at him as if to say, 'looks like you're stuck.'

He lowered his head in defeat, then raised it to look Shinohara in the eye. "I will stay and help you find Hiroshi's killer."

The man returned his stare for a moment. Then Shinohara nodded grudgingly, and turned and went back to the head of the procession, signaling to Kenshin to follow.

Watching the man's back as he trudged behind him, Kenshin flashed back to the bathhouse. Shinohara was about the same size and shape of the man who'd tried to kill him when he was at his most vulnerable, but then so were many of the men stalking along down the street following the body of Hiroshi Tanaka. It could be any of them, and any of them could have started the calls for him to stay, thus ensuring that he'd remain in the town. Did they want another chance at him? If so, why?

The procession went past the basketweaver and cooper's shops. The cooper, Toshi, stood up and gazed at the blanket covered body going by. Out of the corner of his eye, as he glanced backward, Kenshin saw the man's face contort in a grimace, but when he turned his neck for a better look, Toshi's face was placid and expressionless again. Then the crowd got in the way and he couldn't see the man anymore.

They took the body to the town's main shrine, handing it over to the priests. Kenshin hung back at the shrine's gate and let the crowd continue inside without him. One of the last ones through was the little middle-aged messenger who'd brought news of Hiroshi's death to the Tanaka family inn.

"Excuse me," Kenshin said, stepping up to the man.

The messenger stopped and regarded Kenshin warily.

"Can you tell me where Mikio is?"

The wariness left the man's face and a touch of sadness clouded his eyes. "I left the boy by the ditch where we found his father."

"Did he…see the body?"

"Yes."

Kenshin sighed inwardly. "I see. Where is this ditch?"

The man pointed back down the street. "Go south, past the old checkpoint. Keep going past the old cherry tree and the ruined tavern. Turn right at the tavern. There's a culvert that leads down to a stream behind the tavern. The ditch is right above the culvert."

Kenshin nodded, thanked the man, and set off.

o-o-o

He heard Mikio before he saw him. Rounding a stand of pine trees, Kenshin stepped into a patch of sun and out onto a weed strewn bank that fell away sharply into the ditch. The people from the old tavern must have dug the ditch to force runoff into the culvert that ran by their inn. Over the years, the ditch had deepened from rainwater and grown as its sides eroded, revealing rough rocky patches.

Mikio stood on one of the exposed boulders, crying and throwing rocks down into the ditch below.

"Like a dog. They treated him like a dog, like he was garbage, throwing him in a ditch."

Kenshin heard the boy mutter the words over and over, like a mantra. Then, throwing his last rock into the dry gulley so hard that the pebble ricocheted off the bottom and dug itself into the soft dirt of the opposite embankment, Mikio changed his litany.

"I hate them!" he shouted. "I'll kill them! I'll kill them all!"

Tear tracks lined Mikio's cheeks, as tears continued to fall, but his expression was nothing like Miho's when she'd mourned for their father. Kenshin watched, at a loss. Hiko would never have allowed him to throw a tantrum like that, but Hiko wasn't here, and Kenshin had no right to demand the respect he'd given his master instinctively.

Mikio caught sight of Kenshin, stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, then dropped roughly to a seat on the ground, legs folded and fists digging into his cheeks as he used his hands to support his face. It looked uncomfortable, but Kenshin supposed that was the point. Mikio was using physical pain to blot out the emotional.

He stepped over to the boy, jumping lightly from a clump of weeds to the boulder Mikio had chosen as his platform to yell out his grievances to the world. Mikio hunched his shoulders, but gave no other acknowledgement of Kenshin's presence.

Unlike Miho, the boy did not want a shoulder to cry on. Kenshin sat down next to him and waited.

"Who will teach me to be a samurai now?"

Mikio's question came out more as a broken hearted wail than a rant. "The dojo in the next town over closed down since the war started. Most of the students left."

"ah," Trying to make the sound as soothing as possible, Kenshin processed that information. Mikio not only missed his father's presence, he'd counted on his father to teach him his place in the world.

"You won't teach me, you're leaving!" the child continued balefully, dropping his hands from his face to glare accusingly at him.

"No, I'm staying until your father's killer is found," Kenshin corrected the boy simply, and reflected that he'd better do it quickly too, before the town found out he wasn't who they thought he was. It was only a matter of time before Shinohara sent inquiries to Toba Fushimi about a red headed swordsman who claimed to have fought alongside the shinsengumi. He'd fought under the name Kenshin Himura when he gave up being a shadow assassin and fought as a regular soldier in the Choshu faction of the rebel army. It wouldn't be difficult for Shinohara to discover which side he'd really been on in the war.

"Will you teach me how to be a samurai?" Mikio asked softly. His eyes were soft and pleading. It tore at Kenshin's heart, and he tried to delay disappointing the boy.

"What about your uncle?"

Mouth twisting, Mikio scoffed. "He's got a crippled hand, he can't even hold a sword properly."

"There's more to being a samurai than being able to hold a sword," said Kenshin. He thought of all the brave and noble men he'd fought with. Some were commoners like him; others were samurai. Katsura Kogoro, his leader, fought with his wits, not steel, and changed the course of the war.

Even though Hiko tried to show Kenshin that the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, the school of swordsmanship passed down through generations from master to pupil, was about more than using a sword, Kenshin hadn't listened. He'd learned the hard way the perils of using Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu in ways it was never intended to be used. He'd lost his wife, and nearly lost his soul. He never completed his training with Hiko, and now he never would.

He looked over at the boy frowning at him in confusion, and continued. "Besides, I'm not really a samurai. I wasn't born into a noble family. I'm just a wandering swordsman."

Mikio's frown got deeper and his brow furrowed. "But you wear a katana."

Evidently Mikio didn't realize that in the war even commoners began to use swords, a privilege once granted only to the samurai class.

Kenshin gripped the hilt of his sakabatou and pulled it out, holding the blade horizontally in front of him so Mikio could see it, see that the sharp edge was on the wrong side.

"What…what is that?"

"It's a reverse blade sword," Kenshin told him, marveling once more at the craftsmanship that went into making a blade the polar opposite in form and function of a typical sword. He'd been lucky to get it, and was unsure even now if the swordsmith who gave it to him intended it as a gift or an insult. He pulled the sheath out of his obi and held it up, letting the blade tip find the sheath's mouth and pushing the blade back into it securely. Then he laid it down gently in front of his knees.

"Why would you carry something like that?" Mikio asked, honest curiosity in his voice and on his face.

Kenshin looked at him. "I don't want to kill anymore. I had enough of killing in the war."

Dropping his gaze, Mikio looked away from Kenshin, back at the sakabatou. "What's it like, being in a war?"

Kenshin lifted his chin. There were pine trees lining the far side of the ditch, and when the breeze moved their branches, patches of sunlight shifted and moved on the ground below. The morning was heating up, and he could smell pinesap and the good clean smell of the earth.

The scene was so far removed from the carnage of battle that it might as well have been another world. How do you describe the screams, the horror of watching your comrades cut down by blades or bullets, the splash of your enemies' blood against your skin and clothes, the awful smells and the indignity of corpses piled and in pieces? How do you describe it to a kid who'd obviously been raised on samurai legends and who hero-worshipped his father? He saw again the shinsengumi with the crooked finger, drawing a rifle up to sight along it, obeying some shouted command of Hijikata's. It was a split second memory, and he'd seen the man from afar, but he'd had the impression that Hiroshi Tanaka enjoyed what he was doing, that it was bloodlust he'd seen on the man's face.

There were no heroes in the brutality of combat. Men became killing machines, slaughtering unthinkingly, because if you thought too much about it, you couldn't do it. Ideals, the reasons why you chose to fight in the first place all slipped away in the heat of battle. You killed because you had to; you killed to survive. Kenshin was just better at it than most.

"It's like being in a nightmare that you can't wake up from," Kenshin said at last. The pines shifted again and the sunlight that had bathed his face momentarily was gone. He looked over at Mikio. "I do not think that your father would want you to experience what he did on the battlefield. I think he fought to protect you from having to go through that."

Mikio scowled and jumped to his feet. "You sound just like Uncle Fukashi!" he spat out accusingly. "But I know what my dad said about Uncle Fukashi, and I know he never wanted me to be like him. Father wanted me to be tough and strong like him. He….He…"

Mikio drew a great staggering breath and started crying again. Wheeling, he jumped away, back towards the treeline and ran off towards the old ruined tavern.

Feeling immeasurably older than he had when he woke that morning, Kenshin rose to his knees, slipped his sakabatou in between the folds of his obi, and got up and walked back to town.


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin plot or characters.

The body lay on tatami mats set over scrubbed wood planking on the shrine's floor. Kenshin knelt beside it. Corpses no longer shocked him. Death was something he understood.

Not so the village elders, or Shinohara who'd glared at Kenshin with cold disapproval for making him wait by the body.

In life Hiroshi Tanaka may have been imposing, charming, even handsome, but now…even with the dirt washed off, the body smelled and showed signs of decomposition. Animals hadn't found it, but the insects had.

There was a long gash through the torso, beginning at the neck and cleaving diagonally through the heart, stopping at the spinal cord. With the way the flesh had decayed, Kenshin couldn't tell if the torso-splitting blow had come from the front or the back. But what samurai in his right mind would allow someone to come in front of him with a drawn sword? And would a war veteran allow anyone to walk behind him except someone he trusted?

"Did Tanaka have any enemies in the village?" Kenshin asked.

The cries of outrage from the village elders washed like a storm across the placid room.

It was Shinohara who shushed them by yelling over them.

"What are you talking about? No one in this village would do such a thing! Besides, Hiroshi Tanaka didn't have any enemies besides the Ishin Shishi scum."

Kenshin bowed his head, and let the others' words flow.

"Hiroshi Tanaka was a hero!"

"Yeah, remember the time he pulled his brother out of his uncle's burning dojo? Saved the kid's life just as we came on the scene."

"Fukashi lost some fingers, but if it weren't for Hiroshi, Fukashi wouldn't be alive today. And he was just a kid back then."

"And what about the time he saved that merchant's wife after chasing off the bandits who killed her husband?"

"Ooh, I remember that. He carried her into town and sent us back to retrieve the merchant's body. It was horribly chopped up. Whatever happened to the merchant's wife? She was a pretty little thing as I recall."

"Yeah, the way she looked at him I thought for sure they'd marry. The husband wasn't much to look at. Even chopped up in pieces he was an ugly lug."

"She ran away and never came back." Another voice answered the question, then went on. "Besides, everyone always knew Hiroshi would end up with the prettiest girl in the village."

Kenshin glanced up at that. Prettiest girl in the village? The lady at the inn was nice to look at, but she usually kept out of sight as much as possible, and when she did look up her face was a polite mask. Then he remembered Otsune's face as she'd fixed her daughter's hair, and he had a sense of what she'd looked like when she was younger, before the strain of not knowing if her husband was alive or dead had told on her.

The shopkeeper's wife, on the other hand, was gorgeous enough to rival the highest paid geishas in Kyoto. Kenshin tuned out the chorus of Hiroshi Tanaka's praises and pondered. If Hiroshi Tanaka was used to getting the best in life, and the shopkeeper had brought home a wife prettier than his…

It was an ugly thought, but the crime was an ugly one too. Kenshin stood and bowed politely to the village elders seated across from him on the far side of the body. Surprised into silence, they blinked up at him.

"Please excuse me, there is something I must do in town."

Shinohara narrowed his eyes. "What do you have to do that's more important than our inquiry?"

Kenshin gazed back at the man steadily. "I am sorry. I did not know Hiroshi Tanaka like all of you did. I'm going to town to ask if any strangers came through last week."

"Why last week?"

Gesturing at the body at his feet, Kenshin answered. "Hiroshi Tanaka has been dead at least a week."

A very old man in the back of the group raised his head and called out, "He's right. There was that plague back when I was a young men. So many died that some of the bodies were left untended for a week or more. They looked like Hiroshi, only without the gash through them."

Shinohara nodded curtly, conceding defeat, and turned back to his colleagues.

Taking that as a dismissal, Kenshin left the shrine's back room and made his way to the front entrance and down the steps, slipping into his sandals on the way out.

o-o-o

The woman was leaving the shop as Kenshin came up the street towards it. Without seeing him, she glared at the shoji screen door she'd just closed and set off in the opposite direction, her elaborate obi knot quivering with the force of her strides as she stalked off.

Hideki's wife didn't walk like most women, with small graceful steps; she walked like a man, with purpose and power in her stride. Kenshin wondered for a moment if she'd had any martial arts training, then shook himself and moved up to the shop. Now he was suspecting everyone.

Pulling open the shoji, he entered. The center portion of the shop was clear. Along the walls were raised platforms with trays containing chopsticks and other small implements for sale. Set behind the trays were various pieces of crockery, tall ginger jars, sake jugs, and tea containers. Above them on shelves set into the wall were smaller pieces of china such as dishes, teapots, drinking bowls and cups. There were gaps among the wares, and Kenshin was reminded of Mrs. Minoburi's words about leaving before the shopkeeper and his wife began throwing things. What was it she'd said? That Hideki had bought himself a world of trouble when he'd married? Glancing around at the number of empty spaces on the shelves, Kenshin wondered how the man stayed in business.

The shopkeeper, Hideki, appeared in a doorway set in the back of the shop and stepped forward onto the platform with his arms crossed and a decidedly unwelcoming look on his face.

"What do you want?"

Kenshin dipped his head in a small, polite bow. The man was already on his guard, so there was no point in engaging in the usual extended niceties.

"I need to speak with you about Hiroshi Tanaka."

Hideki stared down at him. "I have nothing to say to you." He half turned and began to go.

It took only a second for Kenshin to leap onto the platform and grab the older man's arm.

"Please," he said. "I need your help. There is no one else who will tell me the truth about him."

It was a gamble, appealing to the man's pride, but what else could he do? Beat the information out of him? That was a tactic used by the Bakufu officials. That sort of callous disregard for people was one of the reasons Kenshin hated them so much and fought against them.

There was a brief flare of anger in the man's eyes as he shook off Kenshin's hand and turned to face him once more, and Kenshin thought he'd miscalculated, but Hideki surprised him and began to speak.

"The truth? The truth is, Hiroshi Tanaka wasn't the saint everyone says he was. It's no secret that he seduced my wife. The whole town knows, but they forgive him because he's the great Hiroshi Tanaka, and Tanaka can do no wrong," he said bitterly. "He would have taken her away with him. She told me they had plans. She was going to run off to the city and he'd keep her in a little house there and come to visit her, as if she were some high class geisha. If he hadn't left to join the Shinsengumi off in Kyoto, she would have gone with him to the city, but he left her here."

Hideki nodded fiercely, gazing inwardly with a sort of grim satisfaction. "He left her, and never sent for her, after making her think he loved her. That's the type of man he was."

"I see."

Hideki stared sharply at Kenshin. "Do you? Hiroshi Tanaka was the sort who just couldn't stand anyone having something better than him. He got joy in destroying other people's happiness. He ruined my wife, ruined our marriage, and he didn't even want her in the end. The worst thing is, he had the whole town conned into thinking he was a great guy just because he knew how to smile and act charming."

"Did you kill him?" The question slipped out before Kenshin could stop it. He hadn't meant to be so blatant.

The other man's mouth opened in shock, then he snapped it closed and leaned forward until Kenshin could smell the man's lunch on his breath. "No, I didn't kill him, but I hated him, and I'm glad he's dead. Now get out of my shop."

It was clear Hideki was finished talking. Kenshin nodded slowly, backed carefully off the platform and left.

o-o-o

The inn was quiet; Miho and Mikio conspicuously absent, and he found he missed the sounds of their laughter and play. Perhaps they'd been sent on errands. Kenshin sighed and wondered if there was any chance of a midday meal. He'd forgotten breakfast, and his stomach was beginning to complain.

Crossing the courtyard, he heard muttering coming from a side yard, and went to investigate. It was Aya, the old maidservant, taking clothes from the laundry line that stretched across the yard. She shook out a long piece of fabric smartly and laid it down with unnecessary force on the growing pile in the laundry basket at her feet. Catching sight of the fierce look on her face, Kenshin decided against asking her for food. He stood a moment longer watching, then made his way back to the inn's front entrance, slipped his sandals off, and went inside.

The big common area was empty, so he drifted back towards the hall that led to his own small room. He was almost upon it when he heard the sound of fabric against wood flooring. The kitchen area was back that way, and his nose caught the scent of food cooking. He followed it.

He was nearly at the kitchen when he saw motion out of the corner of his eye. There was a half open shoji screen door, and behind it, sitting on the floor, was Otsune. Her hair was pulled off her face in a loose knot, and she was leaning over something on the tatami mats, a basket of linens by her side. Kenshin stepped to the doorway to ask about the food, but stopped when he realized what she was doing. She was folding a man's kimono. It was white, the color of mourning. He watched as she folded the collar down along its neckline, folded back the lapels, and brought the left to the right before laying the left lapel gently over both.

It had to be Hiroshi's kimono. She was folding it to take it to the shrine. Kenshin thought of Hiroshi's body, bloated, mottled, and ugly in death, and hoped the men of the town would keep her from it. He doubted the kimono would even fit over her husband's body anymore. Death was never pleasant, but its affect on a body got worse as time advanced.

Otsune brought the kimono side seams together, folded the left sleeve over, and brought the bottom edge to the top, then flipped it and pulled the right sleeve over, creating a rectangle of fabric. Kenshin was just stepping forward to ask about the food when a shoji screen at the opposite end of the room opened and Fukashi appeared.

He didn't notice Kenshin, for his eyes, full of compassion, were on his sister-in-law. Otsune looked up and turned her head as the shoji screen opened, so Kenshin could only see the back of her head. She bowed her neck and shifted her weight back to her heels, preparing to rise. As she did so, a hairpin slipped out of the loose bun at the back of her head and slid off to land on the white kimono in front of her.

Fukashi crossed the room and dropped to his knees, picking up the hairpin and holding it out to her, careful not to sit on his brother's kimono, which lay between them.

"Thank you," she whispered, and took it.

Fukashi reddened and nodded, sinking back on his heels.

"Did you…want something?" she asked hesitantly.

Fukashi shook his head, the movement causing the strands of hair straggling out of his ponytail to shake as well. He pressed his right hand to his side, concealing the injury.

"No, I'll be going now," he said, rose to his feet, and left the way he'd come.

For a heartbeat, Kenshin remembered how it was in Otsu, when his feelings for Tomoe threatened to overwhelm him, yet he couldn't show it. He hadn't wanted to spoil things between them, not when she'd begun to relax in their borrowed farmhouse as both of them became used to their pretend marriage and its necessary proximity. He remembered finding joy in simply watching her move about her chores, awed by her beauty and grace. He'd felt awkward in comparison, and kept silent. Fukashi had that same air about him. Did Otsune know? Had Tomoe known?

Otsune moved her head, and Kenshin caught sight of her profile as she stared down at the hairpin in her hand. A tear slid down her cheek, and she lifted her other hand to brush it away.

Embarrassed, he moved silently away from the doorway and made his way to the kitchen.

Aya was there, bustling in and through the square shaped room with a basket of linens in her arms. She bowed impatiently over it when she saw Kenshin.

The smell of food came from an iron pot suspended over the hearth. When Aya saw him glancing at it, she hummed a bit then came forward.

"Would you like some, great samurai?"

Though the words were polite, her tone was impatient. The death in the family made her less inclined to fawning.

"You're busy," he told her. "Please, go on. I can get it myself."

She took another step towards the door, giving him a look that was half grateful, half suspicious, as if she didn't trust him not to spill the soup.

At that moment, Fukashi came into the room, entering through the doorway behind Kenshin. He nodded to him, but spoke to the maidservant.

"Otsune needs you. She's folding the laundry. She should be resting."

Aya straightened her spine and marched out of the room without another word, hurrying to her mistress.

Fukashi watched her go impassively then turned to Kenshin.

"I'll get the food for you. It's just tofu and vegetables with rice."

"That's fine."

The older man crossed the kitchen to get some bowls out of a cabinet, and as he went Kenshin saw that he limped slightly. Fukashi recrossed the kitchen, making his way to the cooking pot. He saw Kenshin notice his limp and reddened.

"I tripped," he said curtly.

Kenshin winced slightly in sympathy as he remembered hearing the crash that morning as Fukashi fell in his rush to go see the messenger bringing news of his brother's death.

"I can eat in here," he told the man, not wanting to add to his burden.

Fukashi paused, surprised, then nodded curtly and began ladeling the food into bowls. In the end, they ate together sitting politely if not companionably in silence, shoveling food from bowl to mouth, the only sound their chopsticks clicking against the porcelain of the bowls.

They were just finishing when Aya came to the doorway and bowed.

"My mistress is sleeping peacefully," she said, and held out a rectangular parcel wrapped in paper. "She wanted me to give you Hiroshi's kimono, to take to the shrine."

Fukashi set aside his bowl and chopsticks, went over to the old woman and took the package in his uninjured hand. A look passed between them, then Fukashi jerked his head towards the hallway behind Aya.

"Go watch over your mistress."

"Don't I always?" she grumbled as she turned to obey.

Fukashi looked over at Kenshin, still seated on the floor by the hearth. "I'm going to the shrine," he said.

"I'll go with you."

Kenshin grabbed his sheathed sakabatou from where he'd laid it by his side on the floor. He rose and inserted it smoothly under the obi belt at his waist. This was a perfect chance to ask Fukashi about his brother. The pool of suspects in Hiroshi's murder seemed to be getting bigger instead of smaller as he learned more about the man. And then there was the man who'd attacked him in the bathhouse. Was he Hiroshi's killer? Or just someone who knew Kenshin's secret and wanted him punished? He was, after all, the lone Ishin Shishi soldier in a town full of Bakufu supporters.

Fukashi only grunted in response and led the way out of the kitchen.

"What about the dishes?" Kenshin asked, glancing back at the bowls left on the floor.

"Let Aya get them," Fukashi ordered curtly, then with an uncharacteristic flash of humor in his voice, he continued. "It'll give her something new to complain about. That woman isn't happy unless she's grumbling about something."

Kenshin glanced up at the taller man in surprise, but by then the spark of humor was gone, and his face was back to its usual grim expression. They were out of the inn and on the road leading to the heart of town when Kenshin spoke again.

"What was your brother like?"

Fukashi broke his stride for a second and shot a look at Kenshin as he walked on.

"You've heard all the stories, why ask me?"

"I was asked by the town elders to find Hiroshi's killer," Kenshin explained. "I need to know the truth in order to do that."

"The truth?" Fukashi snorted. He stopped suddenly and wheeled to stand in Kenshin's way. "What do you care? You didn't even really know my brother, at least that's what you say."

Abashed, Kenshin stood still, not knowing how to respond to the angry man confronting him.

Fukashi saw his indecision and huffed, his breath sending his tendril-like bangs dancing on either side of his forehead.

"Let the stories the townsmen love to tell be my brother's legacy. Now I've got a kimono to deliver."

With that, the older man stalked off, leaving Kenshin openmouthed in the middle of the road. It seemed Fukashi knew his brother wasn't the hero everyone thought him, or was he just angry at Kenshin for bothering him during his period of mourning? Or was it something else? Remembering the look on Fukashi's face as he'd stood in the doorway gazing at his sister-in-law, Kenshin wondered if Fukashi was worried about the effect on her and his niece and nephew if the truth about his brother came out.

The shopkeeper, Hideki, said the 'whole town' knew about Hiroshi's affair with his wife, but that didn't necessarily mean that Otsune knew of it. Kenshin forced himself to trudge slowly after Fukashi, allowing the distance between them to lengthen. A sudden sharp dislike of his task filled him. Why was he doing this? Why was he prying into people's secrets when he had secrets of his own to protect? The more he learned about Hiroshi, the more he was beginning to dislike the man.

Glancing around, Kenshin realized he'd come abreast of the cooper's shop. The man was staring at him. He must have heard the exchange between Kenshin and Fukashi. He stood in the doorway of his shop, holding a bowl and chopsticks. Mrs. Minoburi had been and gone, judging by the empty bowl and the tray that lay at his feet, its cloth covering bunched beside it. She'd also seen to the small cuts on his hands, for thin strips of white bandaging circled a couple of his fingers and his wrist. Another bandage was wound around his lower shin.

Kenshin had struck his attacker in the bathhouse in the shin. Eyes narrowing, he stepped forward.

The cooper held his glare for a moment, then deliberately stepped back into his shop and shut the shoji screen door with a snap, not retreating, but refusing to speak to Kenshin. That alone gave Kenshin pause. He was under no illusion about his size or stature. People who knew nothing of his past as hitokiri, hired assassin for Katsura Kogora, tended to be dismissive of him, but when he glared, people noticed and took him seriously. It was how he was able to stop gossip about Tomoe back when she first started working at the inn in Kyoto. It gave people pause. Why hadn't it worked on the cooper?

Intrigued and suspicious, Kenshin stepped forward. He was almost to the cooper's porch when he heard the commotion from further down the street. With a last look at the cooper's shop, Kenshin wheeled and ran down the road.

He stopped at a crowd of people surrounding a man who was bent over gasping for breath and waving at the people to let him speak.

"Bandits!" he yelled, once he'd caught his breath. "Bandits attacked the village down the road and burned it to the ground. They're coming this way!"

Shinohara, the leader of the town elders, stepped forward, shoving his way past his fellow citizens.

"What do you mean 'they're coming this way'?"

The man stopped gasping and straightened, staring at Shinohara in misery. "I come from Zao village. I sell vegetables here on market days sometimes. My village is just below Murata village, the one the bandits burned. They took everything they could get their hands on. They killed everyone they found. We thought they were headed north, but now that Murata village was attacked, it's clear they're headed our way."

The man dropped to his knees and bowed his head, palms pressed flat against the dusty road. "Please, I beg of you. Send soldiers to protect us. Our village is next, I just know it."

"What soldiers?" Shinohara asked acidly and folded his arms, standing before the man like a judge. "Look around you. Do you see any soldiers here?"

The man raised his head and gaped up at the contemptuous elder. "But surely, the town magistrate…"

"Gone," Shinohara said with a certain grim satisfaction. "He's gone with all the soldiers. There is a war on you know."

"But…"

Shinogara leaned over and glared, dropping his arms so he could rest them on his thighs as he breathed in the man's face. "We're loyal to the Tokugawa shogunate here. Every able man of the samurai class went off to fight."

Kenshin noticed that Shinohara put undue emphasis on the words 'samurai class'. It seemed Shinohara resented the fact that he wasn't a samurai, and hadn't been asked to go. Kenshin blinked sadly. Men like Shinohara idolized war, but only because they'd never actually been in one. He listened as the village elder continued.

"We sacrificed the best men of our village already, and for a better cause than defending you against some bandit scum. You'll just have to defend yourselves from now on."

Shinohara pulled himself upright, his face tight, and shoved his way back through his fellow villagers, leaving the other man open mouthed in dismay, and the people murmuring worriedly about the safety of their town. Shinohara's words had done little to reassure his own people, but they'd just about broken the villager from Zao.

At the far edge of the crowd, Kenshin caught sight of Fukashi, still clutching the package containing his brother's kimono. He was standing next to a small man with a clean shaven head, dressed in monk's robes. He remembered seeing the man at the shrine, hovering worriedly behind the town elders, hesitant in the face of their invasion. Now the monk's face creased in concern and he hurried forward to tend to the devastated visitor from Zao.

There'd been rumors about a group of ronins, a particularly vicious band who were roaming the area. It was one of the reasons why Kenshin found it so easy to get work as a bodyguard for merchant caravans. The bandits were known for killing entire traveling parties. He thought of the men he'd seen in town. Most of them were old, like Hibiki and his cronies, or simple craftsmen and shopkeepers, untrained in the use of weapons. Without the shogunate troops to guard the town, they were virtually defenseless.

Fukashi was staring through his straggly bangs at the monk, who'd put a comforting arm around the Zao villager's shoulders and was helping the man to his feet. Fukashi held Hiroshi's kimono to his chest with his uninjured hand. The other, down at his side, was clenching and unclenching, forming and releasing a fist, despite the lost fingers.

Sensing Kenshin's gaze, Fukashi looked up and stared back as he unconsciously pressed the kimono Otsune had carefully wrapped closer to his torso. Kenshin saw his own anger at the bandits' cruelty and fears for the village reflected in the older man's eyes. He knew what he had to do. As soon as it was dark, he'd be off to find the bandits. Hiroshi's killer could wait another day.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin characters or plot.

CHAPTER SIX

There was a half moon that night. Its glow lent him plenty of light to see by as Kenshin raced down the road. He passed Zao village, frighteningly close to the town, and kept going, keeping watch along both sides of the road for places to camp or signs that a large party had crossed.

The bandits were easy to find. Amateurs, or just brazenly assuming no one would dare to hunt them in the chaos of wartime, they'd built campfires. Kenshin smelt the smoke long before he came upon their campsite.

He scouted, circling the camp. There were twenty of them lounging by the fire, their horses hobbled for the night. When Kenshin started out as a hitokiri, a killer, the largest group of bodyguards he'd encountered at a time was ten, but on the battlefield he'd learned to face a far greater number than that and survive. Back then he'd used a real sword.

Kneeling down behind a clump of boulders, he carefully thumbed the sakabatou's tsuba away from the mouth of the sheath and listened to the bandits talk.

"Dammit, what's keeping Hiroshi?" one of them asked, aggrieved. "He said he needed to go pick up some stuff from his hometown over a week ago. Why isn't he back yet?"

"Doesn't he have a wife back in that town of his?" Another asked suggestively. "Maybe he's making up for lost time. Maybe he missed her."

A new voice chimed in. "You wouldn't know it by how he behaved back in Kyoto. One woman I can see, but three or four? He had his pick of the girls."

Coarse laughter greeted this information. When it died down another voice, lower and contemptuous, joined the conversation. "Hiroshi Tanaka doesn't care about his wife. He showed me a picture of her once, and said I could have her if I wanted. Whatever's keeping him in town, it isn't love of her."

"Maybe we should all have a turn with her then!" someone suggested, and began describing in detail what he'd planned for Otsune.

Kenshin felt a surge of white hot anger rising within him at the bandits' words. He pictured Otsune, remembering how her face had softened when she fixed her daughter's hair ribbon, and the way she'd fainted so suddenly when she received news of her husband's death. The thought of these men, these vermin, touching her…If anyone had ever done to Tomoe what they were proposing to do to Otsune…

Concentrating, he clamped down hard on his anger, shoving it aside as Hiko taught him, and used it to fuel his strategy. He was always cold during battle. No matter how strenuous or grueling a fight became, he stayed alert and calculating, anticipating others' moves by reading their emotions. Hiko taught him that too, taught him how to watch and wait for the moment when his opponent's rage and battle lust kicked in and their training slipped as emotion took over. That was when the common soldier slipped up, made mistakes, and left him openings. It was the point at which rage ironically made them weaker, even as it convinced them they were invincible.

Kenshin stayed cold. People, his comrades during the war, told him that sometimes his eyes glinted amber when he fought, but that was the only sign of the emotion pent up within him. For now, it was enough to feel the hilt of the sword in his hand, the silk cording over rayskin biting into his palm.

"Forgive me, Tomoe." He whispered the words as he drew his sword, and stepped out of hiding.

o-o-o

The bandits' reaction was almost comical when they saw him step out from behind the rocks and into the firelight.

They froze in shock. The moment stretched out. Then all hell broke loose. They scrambled to their feet, drawing their swords, some awkwardly, but others with a deadly grace that spoke of hours spent in dojos, mastering the art of the katana. It didn't matter. It never did.

Kenshin burst forward silently as the first line charged him with a roar. It was difficult to hold back, to break ribs instead of slicing completely through torsos, to find the weak point on necks, instead of severing heads from bodies, but he did it. He'd promised Tomoe he wouldn't kill ever again once the war was over, and after the battle of Toba Fushimi, it was over for him.

Towards the end, the last eight of them circled around him. They were the ones with the most training. Their eyes were serious, and they rushed him from two sides, from his front and his back. If he'd had time, Kenshin would have laughed.

He sped backwards, surprising them. Ducking under the sword descending towards his head, he pulled his sword back sharply by his side, the bottom edge of the hilt digging deep into his opponent's stomach, winding him. The man dropped his sword to clutch at his middle, but Kenshin's aim was true, and he'd be out of the fight nursing a battered solar plexus for some time.

His companion roared and swung horizontally, but Kenshin whirled and met the man's blade with his own, then dipped it so the man's sword slid off of his, its tip landing in the dirt. While his opponent was off balance, Kenshin stepped sideways and drove his sakabatou hilt into the back of the man's neck. He dropped, suddenly and fluidly, like a sack of rice slipping from someone's hands.

By now the men who'd charged from the opposite direction reached Kenshin. Two of them were running with their swords straight out in front of them, going for a skewering, rather than a slashing blow. They were just far enough apart for Kenshin to slip sideways between them as they over ran their mark.

He bashed his hilt against the side of the taller one's head, dropping him, then whirled and brought his sword's dull side against the shorter one's knee as the man pivoted, trying to turn back to reach Kenshin with his sword, only to roar in pain as the sakabatou damaged tendons and ligament.

The last four entered the fray, but Kenshin was too fast for them. He leapt up to the top of the clump of boulders he'd hid behind while eavesdropping on them, then jumped down, using the added height of his descent to increase the power of his downward swing, breaking the first man's collarbone as he connected with his chosen target.

He immediately pulled to the left, swinging his sword horizontally, and clipping the next man in the armpit as the swordsman stood with his katana raised over his head. The man staggered in pain, and Kenshin dipped down to one knee, angling his own blade around the back of his head, then launching it as he straightened, so that the hilt's edge hit the staggering man square under his chin, knocking him backwards and into the third man. The third man barely had enough time to move his sword out of the way to avoid piercing his friend. Both crashed to the ground, the other struggling to get out from under the unconscious one's body.

Meanwhile, the last bandit stood with his knees slightly bent and his sword held straight up by his ear. It was an unusual stance, but Kenshin already saw several ways around it. Still he waited, letting the bandit come to him.

The man's eyes were alight with battle lust. He smiled and sidled to the right, planting his feet firmly as he cross stepped, to avoid being off balance for even a second.

"You're good," he told Kenshin approvingly, "but I'm better."

He was the bandit with the low, ugly voice who'd told the others that Hiroshi Tanaka had offered him Otsune, his wife.

Kenshin let the taunt wash over him. He knew from the sounds coming from his back, that the man who'd been felled by his friend was now back on his feet, getting ready to charge. Even had he not heard it, he would have been able to tell by the way the man in front of him was moving him into position, circling so Kenshin would be facing outward, away from the campfire. By the time the man behind Kenshin charged, he'd be coming from the direction of the blazing fire, and if Kenshin turned to look, all he'd see would be a dark shadow coming at him, haloed in the fire's light.

Without warning, the man in front moved, bringing his sword downward as he lunged, trying for a diagonal cut across Kenshin's body, clearly expecting him to parry the blade. Instead, Kenshin sidestepped, and the blade continued its downward plunge as he pivoted and shoved the man forward, helping him along with a blow to his back with his sakabatou's hilt.

The man with the low voice stumbled, unable to regain his balance, as his friend's blade dove deep into his shoulder, instead of into Kenshin's back.

"Saichiro?"

The man dropped his own sword and turned a shocked face to his comrade, who pulled back frantically, wrenching his blade out of the man's body, and watched him drop to his knees.

A look of horror crossed Saichiro's face, as the man with the low voice slumped over, grasping at his wound. Then horror turned to rage and he ran wildly at Kenshin, leaping over the prone form of his friend, sword raised upright in imitation of his friend's stance.

Expressionless, Kenshin simply dropped and swiped with his sword, knocking the man's legs out from under him then brought his sword back around and clocked him in the temple as he fell, knocking him out.

Gazing around the camp, he saw only moaning or unconscious figures of men, lying on the ground. Their bodies were broken, but they'd live. The only one in imminent danger was the one Saichiro stabbed.

Sheathing his sword, Kenshin walked over and knelt by the man, staring into his hate filled eyes.

"Come to finish me off?" the man spat out defiantly as blood pooled and escaped through the fingers he was pressing against his wound.

"No."

Checking to be sure the man's sword was too far away for him to reach, Kenshin shoved a hand into the sleeve of his gi top and found a roll of bandages, tied up with a silk cord. He also felt around for the wad of ricepaper squares he kept there to clean his sword and pulled them out as well.

Grabbing the man by the uninjured shoulder, he jerked him upright to a sitting position. The man let out a string of curses as Kenshin pushed his hand away from his wound and ripped his shirt away from the gashed flesh.

Kenshin divided the ricepaper and pressed it against the entrance and exit wounds, then wrapped the bandaging tightly around the man's shoulder, passing the end under his arm and back around again and again until he ran out and had to rip the strip of cloth down the middle and tie the edges together.

By this time the man ran out of curses and was sitting white-faced and trembling in pain.

"I suppose you want thanks," he said sullenly when Kenshin finished.

Sinking back on his heels, Kenshin stared the bandit in the eyes, giving him his best flat glare, and was gratified to see the man flinch.

"I want nothing from you, but I warn you, if you or any of your friends mention Hiroshi Tanaka to the authorities I'll be back, and you'll regret it."

Kenshin held the man's gaze a moment longer, watching fear enter his eyes, then abruptly stood up and turned to go. He'd come quite a ways to find the bandits, and he wasn't quite sure how far it was to the next town. Going back to the post town wasn't an option. They didn't have a magistrate anymore, only some village elders who wouldn't know what to do with a group of prisoners this big. It would have to be the next town down the road.

"Hey!"

Kenshin sighed. Evidently he hadn't frightened the man enough. He turned around and gave a flat stare.

The wounded man quailed a bit, but went on. "Why do you want to protect him? What's Hiroshi Tanaka to you?"

Kenshin remembered his first sight of the inn, with Miho and Mikio running to greet him. He thought of Fukashi, who'd come out, linens in his arms, to welcome him, and Otsune and Aya working hard in the back to make the inn a success. He thought of Hiroshi, casually promising to pass his wife to another man, as if she were a dish of sake. These bandits would not be permitted to disrupt their lives, not by attacking the town, and not by shaming them with the truth about Hiroshi.

"Tanaka is dead," Kenshin told the man. "He means nothing to me. Just do as I say."

Something in Kenshin's tone got through to the man. He shivered and nodded. "I'll tell the others," he promised, and Kenshin believed him.

o-o-o

Kenshin knelt before the magistrate of Sendai. It had taken him until nearly dawn to get to the town, even at the jogging pace he'd forced himself to take. As he'd hoped, Sendai was big enough to boast a magistrate and a small contingent of horse soldiers.

Roused from his bed, the magistrate wasn't particularly pleased to see Kenshin. He'd arrived in the anteroom dressed in his Kami-shimo, his official dress uniform, with his family crest prominently displayed on the wide, stiffened shoulders.

Kenshin bowed low over the tatami mats, conscious of the way his gi stuck to the sweat drying on his back, and the way his bangs were plastered to his forehead as he pulled up from the bow and met the magistrate's eyes steadily.

"You have information about the bandits?" asked the magistrate gruffly. The man's voice was low, gravelly, and commanding. It matched his demeanor as he sat, hands on his knees, body still and expectant. Kenshin knew at once that the magistrate was a true samurai, not a bureaucrat.

"I do. They're camped to the left of the road, past Murata village." Not that Murata village was a village anymore. The bandits' fire had swept through it, leaving only charred support beams and foundation stones. "If you hurry, you can capture them."

The last bit was a lie. With the amount of broken limbs and unconscious bodies Kenshin left behind, the bandits wouldn't be traveling any time soon. He'd also scattered their horses, so they'd be on foot. The magistrate didn't really have to hurry at all.

The man stared hard into Kenshin's eyes for a moment, then nodded, accepting the information. He motioned with his hand and another man, thin-faced with the pallor of one who worked indoors most of the time, came forward from where he'd been sitting to the rear of the magistrate. This was the one Kenshin first spoke to when he'd made it to the magistrate's house and asked for an audience with him. He'd been reluctant at first to wake his master, but Kenshin insisted.

"Toujiro, call the men. We ride out now."

The pale little clerk, Toujiro, scuttled away on his knees, opened the shoji screen door leading to the hall, and disappeared.

Placing his hand back on his knee, the magistrate continued to stare at Kenshin for a moment, assessing him, before he spoke.

"Why were you on the road so late at night?"

"I'm a wanderer," Kenshin answered quietly. "Where else would I be?"

A frown crossed the magistrate's face. Kenshin saw it, but resolved to stick to his story. There was no need to bring the Tanaka family into it, or to disturb the peace of their inn with inquiries about a red headed stranger who'd stayed with them. They'd been through enough as it was. Let the magistrate think he'd stumbled on the camp while traveling.

"I was looking for a good place to stop for the night. I smelled their campfire, and overheard them talking."

Kenshin kept his face blank, leaving it to the magistrate to believe or disbelieve his words.

At that moment, Toujiro returned, slipping through the doorway with a deferential bow before coming to kneel before his superior, who acknowledged him quickly.

"The men are ready. I've ordered your horse saddled as well," he reported. Then he stole a glance at Kenshin. "Will this one be coming along too?"

The magistrate also glanced over to Kenshin. "No. Give him some food and a place to rest." He rose fluidly to his feet, sinking back on his heels and straightening his legs almost in one motion, to stand towering over Kenshin and Toujiro.

"We'll talk again later," he promised Kenshin, then strode out the door.

'Not if I can help it,' thought Kenshin, even as he bowed in apparent agreement. The last thing he needed was to answer questions about what he'd done at the bandits' camp. He may have scared their leader into shutting up about Hiroshi Tanaka, but the men he'd injured would definitely be cursing Kenshin for some time.

He followed Toujiro to the kitchen for food, then lay down on the futon in a spare room the clerk ushered him to. He gave himself three hours to sleep, then resolved to be on his way. The room had a window, so it would be easy to slip out and follow country tracks back to the Tanaka inn. He'd left some things there including the straw hat which concealed his hair as he traveled. He also had some unfinished business in that town. Thinking on it, Kenshin at last let his body relax in sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin characters or plot

**A/N: At long last, the solution to the mystery. This chapter is dedicated to Heather Logan, whose guesses are always insightful.**

CHAPTER SEVEN

The trip back was easier in the light. Only once did Kenshin have to leave the road to hide in the trees as the magistrate and his men passed by escorting their shackled prisoners. They'd requisitioned a wagon for the ones with broken limbs, but the rest shambled along, docile and miserable. He saw the bandit he'd bandaged glaring at the others in the wagon. The rest of them seemed cowed, and Kenshin knew he'd made a good choice when he'd told the wounded bandit to keep the others quiet about Hiroshi. He was obviously a leader. The others wouldn't talk.

After they passed by, Kenshin got back on the road and made it to the outskirts of town just as the daylight began to soften into early evening. He was just coming towards the first few buildings that marked the beginning of the town when motion caught his eye. To his right, a man was setting out down a path that led away from the road and up a ridge. It was Fukashi Tanaka.

Kenshin opened his mouth to call out, then closed it again slowly as he noticed Fukashi's manner. The man glanced back at the buildings and paused to be sure no one saw him as he hurried down the path into the trees dotting the ridge. Why would Tanaka be going into the forest? And why would he care if anyone saw him?

Without realizing he'd made a decision, Kenshin found himself leaving the road and hurrying after the innkeeper. He caught sight of him in minutes, spotting Fukashi's kimono disappearing between some bushes to the left of the path. When Kenshin got to the spot he saw that while the path continued up the next ridge, the bushes that Fukashi stepped behind led to a dry streambed. He'd left the path.

Wary now, Kenshin left it as well, but instead of taking the rock strewn route Fukashi had taken, he paralleled it, keeping to the foliage on the bank of the streambed. Thankful for the deepening shadows which provided cover, Kenshin followed.

In Spring, the stream was likely torrential, judging by the way the banks towered above the dry channel. Kenshin wondered if the streambed connected to the same stream that wound its way past the ruined tavern where he'd found Mikio, crying his eyes out for his father and his lost dreams.

Eventually, the stream leveled out by a flat meadow area, and Kenshin had to hang back further as Fukashi trudged up the sandy incline way from the streambed and into the grassy clearing.

Keeping to the higher ground, Kenshin pulled back and crouched low as he made his way up one of the hills surrounding the meadow, retreating as Fukashi advanced. At first it seemed that Fukashi was headed straight for him, but then the older man angled over to the hill next to Kenshin's and knelt.

A clump of bushes obscured the man now that he was closer to the ground, and Kenshin crept forward until he left his hill and was between it and the one Fukashi was paying obeisance to. For the innkeeper was sitting still, head bowed reverently, with his lips moving silently as if praying at a shrine.

Then suddenly, Fukashi lunged forward, and his upper body disappeared from view. The movement startled Kenshin, and he pulled back instinctively before leaning forward again as Fukashi stood up, a long rectangular bag in hand. It was a sword bag, and Fukashi undid the ties onehandedly, holding the concealed sword awkwardly with the thumb and forefinger of his wounded hand. Once it was undone, the bag slipped off the sheathed katana, and Fukashi let it fall to the ground.

He unsheathed the sword with his left hand, knelt to set the sheath down, then turned his back and walked to the center of the meadow and began practicing. Kenshin watched and assessed. Fukashi wasn't up to the standards of Saitoh Hajime or any of the other left handed swordmasters of the Shinsengumi, but he knew what he was doing. Coming to the meadow for solitary practice was something Kenshin understood. He hated it when other people watched him, though he suspected Fukashi's desire for solitude stemmed more from embarrassment over his ruined right hand than anything else, given the way he constantly tried to hide it in public. He must keep the sword hidden in the meadow so that Mikio wouldn't stumble across it in the inn. Since Mikio told Kenshin that Fukashi couldn't even hold a sword anymore, he realized that Fukashi hid his practice sessions from his nephew also.

Deciding to get a better view, Kenshin started up the back of the hill where Fukashi kept his sword. He was nearly at the top when the ground beneath his feet gave way.

He scrabbled at the dirt and grass as he fell through, but it crumbled even as he grasped it and the rough edges slipped through his fingers as he disappeared into the darkness at the center of the hill.

He landed with a thud that jarred his teeth, and fell back onto a knobby, uneven surface, covering his face with his arms as pebbles and bits of earth rained down on him from the cave in above. As soon as the dirt stopped falling, he lowered his arms and looked around. He was in a small, circular cave. Light poured in dimly from the hole above, but also from an aperture off to his left.

As he looked around, Kenshin noticed that he wasn't alone. Bodies lined the sides of the cave. They were skeletons now, the bones showing white through the ruins of their clothing, and with a start, Kenshin realized that the knobby surface he lay on was one of them. He rolled immediately forward and knelt in the center of the cave, directly under the hole above.

He had no thrill of fear or revulsion, for the dead were neither a matter of fear or horror to him anymore, and these bodies had been in the cave for several years. Dispassionately, he counted them. There were six skeletons in all, neatly laid out, with their arms crossed over what had once been their chests. His landing had disarrayed one of the skeletons, and he wondered if he should straighten it, then dismissed the notion as foolish.

Fukashi Tanaka was still outside, and unless he was deaf, he couldn't have missed the sound of Kenshin's fall. Even as he thought of the man, Fukashi's voice came to him, low and panicky.

"What's that? Who's there? Come out!"

Kenshin sighed and made for the cave's opening to his left. "I'm coming out," he warned, and placed his hand on his sakabatou's hilt.

There was a flat rock by the cave's entrance that held a bowl of sand and the burnt remains of a stick of incense stuck in it. There was also a plank of wood someone had shoved deep into the earthen wall of the cave to act as a shelf. That was where Fukashi must keep his sword. Kenshin reminded himself that the man now held that sword in a manner that bespoke years of practice. He sighed wearily over the coming confrontation as he ducked his head and pushed aside a branch obscuring the low entrance to the cave, and stepped out into the meadow.

Fukashi stood there waiting for him, sword held tip down in front of him. Kenshin kept his own sword in its scabbard at his side, and shook his head to dislodge a few clinging particles of dirt from his bangs. If there was to be a fight, the last thing he needed was dirt falling into his eyes.

As his head stilled, Kenshin's eyes dropped to his opponent's sword, which was still pointed towards the ground. Then his eyes traveled further, past the sword, to the man's legs. Fukashi had kilted up his kimono by tucking in some of the fabric by the side seams into his obi belt to shorten it in order to get it out of the way as he practiced. Even in the fading sunlight, Kenshin could see the tell-tale bruise on the man's shin.

Suddenly, it all clicked. The man in the bathhouse, the one who'd swung his sword downward at Kenshin, was Fukashi.

Kenshin raised his eyes to the man's face. "Why did you try to kill me?"

Fukashi glanced down at the bruise on his shin, then back up at Kenshin. His face tightened. "I'd kill anyone who threatened Otsune and the children." He stared back at Kenshin, eyes level and determined, and Kenshin knew at last the answer to the mystery he'd promised to solve.

"Including your brother?" he asked softly.

A flash of emotion, strong and indescribably painful to watch, passed over the man's face, before his eyes deadened and took on a bleak expression.

"How did you know?" Fukashi asked, not bothering to deny it. "Most people would assume a cripple like me couldn't use a sword anymore." He said it without bitterness or self pity, and Kenshin respected that.

"Hisroshi Tanaka could have been killed by either a right or left handed swordsman, depending on if the killer was standing in front or to the rear of him. I've fought left handed swordsmen before," Kenshin told him, his mind flashing back to several duels he'd had with the shinsengumi and their signature left handed thrusting techniques. "I know what they can do."

Fukashi took his right hand off his katana's hilt and held it out for Kenshin to see. His thumb and forefinger, the missing digits, and the weblike scar tissue were clear to see.

"This was once the best sword arm in three villages. I was going to be the next master of the dojo when my uncle retired. Even Hiroshi couldn't beat me. One night a fire started in our uncle's house where we were staying. I woke to smoke, and pain. Hiroshi pulled a burning beam down on top of me and ground it into my hand. He would've run away and left me there, but everyone showed up just then, so he pretended he was pulling the beam off of me instead. He told me he'd finish the job if I ever said anything."

Fukashi let his hand drop to his side. "I was thirteen, he was fourteen at the time."

Kenshin swallowed, and tried to imagine what it would be like to have your own brother try to kill you. Fukashi went on.

"He married Otsune, the prettiest girl in town. He had the love of my father, he charmed everyone he met, but it just wasn't enough. There was something twisted in Hiroshi. When Otsune went to him that first night they were married, she was a happy, smiling girl. When she came out the next day she was…different. He'd killed all the joy in her. Once the twins were born he left her alone, and I was grateful, for her sake, until the girls started disappearing."

"Girls?" A memory tugged at Kenshin's mind, of a comment made by one of the old men in town, of young people who'd left never to return.

Fukashi nodded gravely. "He was clever about it, always warning the pretty girls about the perils of life in the big city, but managing to make it sound exciting. Eventually he'd get them to agree to run away with him to Tokyo, but then he'd take them out here and…" The man's face became even more bleak and disillusioned as he nodded towards the cave behind Kenshin. "Well, you saw the bodies."

Kenshin swallowed hard as an ugly thought crossed his mind. "How do you know all this?" he asked roughly.

Fukashi laughed mirthlessly and stuck the tip of his sword in the ground, leaning on it as he would a walking stick. "How do you think? I found him shoving Mitsuki's body in the cave one night, when he'd…finished with her. Mitsuki was the cooper's daughter, his latest conquest. I haven't been able to look her father in the face since then. Because of that, I think he's guessed what happened to her. Hiroshi bragged about it to me, he bragged about all of them, all his victims starting with the merchant's wife he seduced. He killed her husband, made it look like bandits did it, and promised her he'd take her away to Tokyo, but instead she ended up like her husband, and Hiroshi ended up with the merchant's gold. He hid it, the gold I mean, in the bathhouse."

"Why didn't you stop him?" Kenshin burst out, and was surprised at how much he sounded like his younger self, arguing with his master, Hiko. He thought he'd outgrown that idealist, naïve tone of voice.

"Stop him?" repeated Fukashi blankly. "I spent most of my life terrified of my brother, but after I found out what he'd done to Mitsuki, and saw that he was planning to do the same with Hideki's wife, I told him to leave town or I'd tell the world what I knew about him."

Fukashi fell silent, and Kenshin waited a moment before speaking. "What happened then?" he asked.

The man grimaced. "At first he didn't believe me, then he told me that if I said anything he'd take it out on Otsune. She belonged to him, he could do whatever he wanted to her, especially since her parents were dead and she had no one to turn to."

Fukashi drew a shattered breath then went on. "I said that if he hurt Otsune any more that I'd take the money from under the floorboards in the bathhouse and throw it all in the river. He was furious, but right about then we got word that the shogun needed samurai to come and help him. Hiroshi made sure that he was the town's golden boy, so how would it look if he'd stayed behind? He went off to join the shinsengumi, and I made sure he was never alone in the bathhouse before he went. That gold was the only hold I had over him."

Fukashi looked away towards the mountains. "I hoped he'd get killed in the war, but he came back instead."

"So you killed him," Kenshin stated.

Fukashi glanced back at Kenshin and kept talking, his thumb moving restlessly across his sword's hilt. "He found me here. He knew I practiced here sometimes. He said if I just got him his money he'd be on his way and he'd never come back, but I knew he was lying. He let slip that he'd been traveling with some ronin, bandits, that he was meeting up with later, and I thought, why stop at the merchant's gold when he could steal from the whole town? And he would have too. Hiroshi always wanted more."

The man stared at Kenshin intently, as if it mattered what he thought, as if he were waiting for a response, so Kenshin nodded gravely. It seemed to satisfy Fukashi, who continued on with his story, never breaking eye contact.

"I killed him," he said softly. "I dragged his body away from here, down the streambed and covered it with dirt."

"Why not put it in there?" Kenshin asked, gesturing behind him at the cave. Then he thought of the careful way Fukashi had laid out the bodies, and remembered the stick of incense in the bowl at the cave's mouth.

"It didn't seem right to put him in with the others," mumbled Hiroshi's brother. "I couldn't give them a proper cremation, but at least I could keep him away from them. I thought it was over, but then you showed up."

Fukashi shot him an accusing look. "I thought he'd told you about the gold, that he'd sent you to get it if he didn't come back, but you never went near the bathhouse the first night. But the second night…"

Fukashi grimaced and pulled his sword tip from the ground. Kenshin tensed, but the man simply wiped off the dirt on his kimono and walked past him to pick up the scabbard and sheathe the blade.

"I'm sorry," he said softly, not looking at Kenshin. "I realize you aren't like Hiroshi. Mikio told me what you said to him." He turned and held the sheathed katana out to Kenshin. "I'll go quietly. Just please, promise me you'll stay and look after Otsune and the children. They'll have no one left after I'm gone."

Reaching out, Kenshin closed his hand over Fukashi's where it gripped the sheath, and held it there. Fukashi's eyes searched his questioningly when Kenshin didn't move to take the katana away from him.

"Look after them yourself," Kenshin said, then pulled his hand away and stepped back.

"What? I don't understand." Fukashi shook his head from side to side, protestingly, lowering the sword to his side.

Kenshin smiled sadly. "How can you ask me to judge you? I've killed men too. Maybe they deserved it, like your brother, and maybe they didn't, but they're all just as dead. I can't stop you from feeling guilty about it, but I don't think leaving Otsune and the children alone will make anybody happy. In fact, I think it would make them very unhappy to know you sacrificed yourself for them."

"Sacrifice? I killed my own brother!" The words came out in an anguished growl.

"Yes, to save your sister-in-law," Kenshin said forcefully.

Remembering the way the man looked at Otsune, the way he cared for her children, Kenshin knew it was true. He knew as well what would've happened to the woman if Hiroshi had lived to loose his bandit friends on the town.

Fukashi reddened and looked away.

Kenshin sighed and took a step back. "I can't stop you if you really want to turn yourself in for murder," he told the man. "But I can tell you that the bandits have been captured, and the town will likely believe that they were responsible for Hiroshi's death. That is what I'm willing to let them believe. If I were you, I'd use the money to fix up your inn. Otsune and the children need you alive, not dead. Sometimes the best way to atone for something is with your life, not your death."

A memory came to Kenshin of Tomoe, and his promise to her, and his heart ached with it, but he kept the pain from his eyes and smiled at the man gaping at him with what looked like hope dawning in his eyes.

"Come on, it's dinner time, and I'm looking forward to a last bowl of Otsune's miso soup."

"Last bowl?" Fukashi repeated slowly.

"I'm a wanderer," Kenshin told him. "After I tell Shinohara and the others about the bandits being captured, I'll be on my way. Forgive me, Fukashi, but I don't think I'll be coming this way ever again."

They exchanged a look, Kenshin's steady and kind, Fukashi's confused yet grateful. He'd do as Kenshin suggested. Kenshin could only hope that it would work for both his sake, and the sake of Otsune, who, unless Kenshin missed his guess, loved him as much as he loved her.

"Yes, I think that would be best," he agreed dazedly.

Kenshin thought of Mikio, and his hero worship of his father. If all went well, that hero worship would be restricted to the sort of qualities he thought his father had, and might one day transfer to his uncle, once Mikio had grown up a little and learned more about true heroism. It would be easier if no more of his father's old 'comrades' showed up. Miho would be alright, since her mother seemed to have shielded her from her father's evil, as well as his devastating charm.

"Then let's go," Kenshin said.

Fukashi bent to retrieve the discarded sword bag. He slid the sword back inside and placed it back in the cave, then rose.

"Thank you," he said softly as he bowed low before straightening to look Kenshin in the eye.

Kenshin nodded, and they turned as one to follow the streambed back towards town.

THE END


End file.
